Balancing of cost-oriented U-type general resource-constrained assembly line: new constraint programming models

Abstract

In simple assembly line balancing problems, it is assumed that the resources required to perform the tasks are available at the relevant station for task assignment. However, each task may need different resource types depending on the difficulty, complexity and technical requirements of the tasks in real life. For this reason, tasks and resources belonging to these tasks must be assigned to the relevant station while balancing the line. In this study, the resource-constrained U-shaped assembly line balancing problem(U-GRCALBP) is discussed. According to the literature research, there is no study dealing with U-GRCALBP. Two different constraint programming (CP) models that define the resource constraints as "and/or" constraint types with concurrent resource types have been developed. In these models, the sum of resource usage costs and station opening cost minimization is aimed. The models are explained with an illustrative example and the efficiency of the models was tested by deriving new resource constraints on sample data sets. The number of stations obtained, the total number of resources used, total station opening and resource usage costs, and CPU time were used as performance criteria. According to the numerical results, it has been shown that both models are effective in solving the problem.