Optimal workforce allocation for assembly lines for highly customised low-volume products

Hytonen, Joni; Niemi, Esko; Toivonen, Ville

doi:10.1504/ijsoi.2008.017703

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Constraint (10) denotes that the processing time of a task is equal to the processing time of the assigned execution mode for that task. Constraint (11) implies that the end time of the task is equal to the start time plus the processing time, which means the task is non-preemptive.…”

Section: Decision Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The importance of the workforce has been widely recognized, especially in labor-intensive industries. Usually, companies that manufacture ETO products have some kind of estimates of the work content of the assembly tasks based on historical data or the analysis of the work content, and the work content estimate is chosen as the basis in our study [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…products have some kind of estimates of the work content of the assembly tasks based on historical data or the analysis of the work content, and the work content estimate is chosen as the basis in our study [11]. Project scheduling is well-known as the project sequencing problem and one of the most important areas in the manufacturing process [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is some previous work focusing on the integrated project scheduling and worker allocation issues. Hytonen et al used discrete event simulation to optimize workforce allocation in assembly lines for highly customized and low-volume products [11]. Heimerl and Kolisch presented the mixed-integer linear program with a tight Linear Programming bound (LP-bound) to solve the problem of simultaneously scheduling IT projects and assigning multi-skilled human resources [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrated Multi-Project Scheduling and Hierarchical Workforce Allocation in the ETO Assembly Process

Hu¹,

Xi²

2019

Applied Sciences

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The engineer-to-order (ETO) production strategy plays an important role in today’s manufacturing industry. This paper studies integrated multi-project scheduling and hierarchical workforce allocation in the assembly process of ETO products. The multi-project scheduling problem involves the scheduling of tasks of different projects under many constraints, and the workforce allocation problem involves assigning hierarchical workers to each task. These two problems are interrelated. The task duration depends on the number of hierarchical workers assigned to the task. We developed a mathematical model to represent the problem. In order to solve this issue with the minimization of the makespan as the objective, we propose a hybrid algorithm combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Tabu search (TS). The improved PSO is designed as the global search process and the Tabu search is introduced to improve the local searching ability. The proposed algorithm is tested on different scales of benchmark instances and a case that uses industrial data from a collaborating steam turbine company. The results show that the solution quality of the hybrid algorithm outperforms the other three algorithms proposed in the literature and the experienced project manager.

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Section: Decision Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrated Multi-Project Scheduling and Hierarchical Workforce Allocation in the ETO Assembly Process

Hu¹,

Xi²

2019

Applied Sciences

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“…The assignment of more workers to the same workstation in the automotive industry is addressed also by Becker and Scholl (2009), but with workers working on different tasks on the same product at the same time. Hytonen et al (2008) use discrete event simulation to study the topic of optimizing workforce allocation in assembly lines for highly customised and low-volume products. Corominas et al (2008) consider the case of a motorcycle factory that hires temporary and thus unskilled workers to tackle the seasonal and market-driven change in production rate.…”

Section: Proceedings Of the 20th World Congressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workforce management in manual assembly lines of large products: a case study

2017

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Abstract:Assembly lines are used for a large variety of products in different industrial sectors. In this paper the focus is placed on complex assembly systems and workstations used for the final assembly of large and bulk products, such as trucks, aircrafts, buses, tool machines. An high number of tasks to be performed at a single assembly station, several workers involved in parallel in the assembly process and long Takt times make such systems different from the models intensively studied in the literature (e.g. the traditional Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem). This study firstly presents a new balancing model to address the problem of the total cost minimization when different operator skills are involved at the same time and then it applies the model to a real industrial case.

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Parallel Workforce Assignment Problem for Battery Production

Erdoğan

Talı

Kırcalı

et al. 2021

Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

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This paper studies workforce assignment problem for battery production in a company in Turkey. Several types of batteries are produced in the studied company. Mostly, the operations are semi-automated. In the production process, the workers are assigned to multiple operations irregularly based on the priority of productions. In the company, average utilization of worker is low, and average cycle time of a product is high due to inefficient allocation of the workforce within the operations. In order to analyze the main system problem, we simulate the system and observe the queue lengths to identify the bottlenecks. By dynamic assignment of workers at stations based on real time queue conditions, the workloads can be balanced throughout the production lines. In this project, a simulation-based system improvement is completed by applying: (i) dynamic utilization of workforce to reduce average cycle time of a battery, (ii) assignment of parallel workforce where they can work for the same operation simultaneously, and (iii) observation of real-time queue lengths of stations. Three dynamic assignment policies are developed and compared with each other. The best policy providing minimum cycle time for a battery production is selected to be the best.

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Optimal workforce allocation for assembly lines for highly customised low-volume products

Cited by 10 publications

References 10 publications

Integrated Multi-Project Scheduling and Hierarchical Workforce Allocation in the ETO Assembly Process

Integrated Multi-Project Scheduling and Hierarchical Workforce Allocation in the ETO Assembly Process

Workforce management in manual assembly lines of large products: a case study

Parallel Workforce Assignment Problem for Battery Production

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