A survey of the assembly line balancing procedures

Abstract

The assembly line balancing problem consists of assigning tasks to an ordered sequence of stations such that the precedence relations among the tasks are satis® ed and some performance measure is optimized. Due to the complexity of the problem, heuristic procedures appear to be more promising than the optimum-seeking algorithms. For the single-model, deterministic version, there are numerous exact and heuristic algorithms developed, while for the other more complex but more realistic versions, the research published consists mainly of heuristic procedures. In this paper, the heuristic procedures are critically examined and summarized in su cient detail to provide a state-of-the-art survey. An evaluation of the procedures and some further research topics have also been presented.

Optimally solving the alternative subgraphs assembly line balancing problem

“…The most relevant version referred to as SALBP-1 ( [ | | m] in the classification scheme of Boysen et al 2007) is to minimize m given c. This problem and the other versions are NP-hard. Recent surveys covering SALBP models and procedures are given by Erel andSarin (1998), Scholl (1999, ch. 2, 4, 5), Rekiek et al (2002) as well as Scholl and Becker (2006).…”

A survey of the literature on the multiple or parallel assembly line balancing problem

“…Some general surveys and reviews (Ghosh and Gagnon, 1989;Erel and Sarin, 1998;Rekiek et al, 2002;Scholl and Becker 2006;Becker and Scholl, 2006;Boysen et al, 2006) discuss the possibility of using parallel lines, but they provide few references. In this section, studies that address some of the problems encountered in the parallelization of assembly lines are presented in chronological order, and comments are provided.…”

“…Previous versions can be complemented by considering the secondary objective of smoothing the workstation times (Rachamadugu and Talbot, 1991;Merengo et al, 1999;Pastor and Corominas, 2000). Further details on the SALBP can be found in the surveys contained in the literature (Buxey et al, 1973;Baybars, 1986;Shtub and Dar-El, 1989;Ghosh and Gagnon, 1989;Erel and Sarin, 1998;Scholl, 1999;Rekiek et al, 2002;Scholl and Becker, 2006). However, the SALBP is often a simplification that bears little resemblance to a real-life situation.…”

Balancing and scheduling tasks in assembly lines with sequence-dependent setup times

“…When we talk about SALBP, the aim can be to minimize the number of stations given a desired cycle time (SALBP-1) or to minimize the cycle time given a fixed number of workstations (SALBP-2). Several techniques have been proposed for the solution of both problems with different considerations of tasks times and configurations (see the reviews of [Ghosh and Gagnon, 1989], [Erel and Sarin, 1998], [Rekiek et al, 2002], and [Dolgui, 2006]). …”