In the context of sustainable development, this paper rationalises the outbound process of a four-way shuttle system with a focus on their modelling, performance evaluation and configuration using a parallel operation strategy to reduce resource waste, thus achieving sustainable development. The parallelism of the hoist and shuttle is innovatively incorporated into the four-way shuttle system, so the modelling content is divided into parallel and serial types. In the parallel operation strategy model, a separation–aggregation queueing network model is constructed, and the open-loop queueing network is innovatively solved using the maximum entropy method. In the serial operation strategy model, a semi-open-loop queuing network is constructed and solved using the geometric matrix method. By varying different parameters, the accuracy of the model is verified by Arena simulation with an error range of 10% or less, and the error of the system performance index calculation is reduced by 20% compared with the existing methods. Setting up 18 different sizes of shuttle systems provided a better performance than a single serial-operation strategy through the addition of parallel strategies, with an average reduction of 12.6% in the system response time and a minimum reduction of 1.8%. The conclusions of this paper were verified on the basis of an arithmetic case analysis.

New concepts such as low-carbon economy, low-carbon production, low-carbon living and even low-carbon cities have become popular topics in environmental protection. The disassembly line part of reverse logistics is accompanied by high carbon emission, which is contrary to the original intention of sustainable development. In this paper, we design a systematic low-carbon layout for the disassembly line of the logistics processing center to address the problem of high carbon emissions caused by the unreasonable layout of the disassembly line. Taking the disassembly line in the logistics center of Company H as the research object, the process of the disassembly line is analyzed, and the SLP analysis method is applied to analyze the material flow and the material flow intensity level of the disassembly line layout, and three different optimization schemes are derived. Flexsim software was used to model and run the three initial layout schemes of the disassembly line, and the data related to the waiting time operation of each scheme were obtained. Finally, carbon emission and other disassembly-line-related indicators were introduced and weights were set, and the results were subjected to weighted gray correlation analysis to arrive at the optimal disassembly line layout optimization scheme. This study will provide reference for other reverse logistics processing center layout studies.

With the development of China’s express delivery industry, the number of express packaging has proliferated, leading to many problems such as environmental pollution and resource waste. In this paper, the process of reverse logistics network design for express packaging recycling is given as an example in the M region, and a four-level network containing primary recycling nodes, recycling centers, processing centers, and terminals is established. A candidate node selection model based on the K-means algorithm is constructed to cluster by distance from 535 courier outlets to select 15 candidate nodes of recycling centers and processing centers. A node selection model based on the NSGA-II algorithm is constructed to identify recycling centers and processing centers from 15 candidate nodes with minimizing total cost and carbon emission as the objective function, and a set of Pareto solution sets containing 43 solutions is obtained. According to the distribution of the solution set, the 43 solutions are classified into I, II, and III categories. The results indicate that the solutions corresponding to Class I and Class II solutions can be selected when the recycling system gives priority to cost, Class II and Class III solutions can be selected when the recycling system gives priority to environmental benefits, and Class III solutions can be selected when the society-wide recycling system has developed to a certain extent. In addition, this paper also randomly selects a sample solution from each of the three types of solution sets, conducts coding interpretation for site selection, vehicle selection, and treatment technology selection, and gives an example design scheme.

Recycling used battery packs for electric vehicles has important economic and ecological benefits. However, existing studies lack a systematic comparison of the different models. There is also a lack of exploration of symmetrical bilateral disassembly lines in comparison to other disassembly lines. Therefore, this paper takes the battery pack dismantling line of a company as the object of study. The disassembly line model is established by considering the number of workstations, disassembly time, disassembly costs, and disassembly risks. This study quantifies the risk of disassembly at each process into specific indicators for modeling. The solving algorithm adopts the improved Northern Goshawk Optimization Algorithm and the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm. A simulation demonstration was conducted using plant simulation to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the unilateral disassembly and symmetric bilateral disassembly line programs. The results show that the optimized unilateral and symmetric bilateral disassembly line schemes increase the efficiency by 23.08% and 38.46%, respectively, compared to the original program. The symmetric bilateral disassembly line scheme is the most efficient among the programs. The optimized schemes significantly improve the overall operational efficiency of the disassembly line. Programs to promote increased efficiency in battery recycling will contribute to environmental sustainability.