A LINE-BALANCE-BASED CAPACITY PLANNING PROCEDURE FOR SERIES-TYPE ROBOTIC ASSEMBLY-LINE

This study has presented an integrated capacity planning procedure for a series-type robotic assembly system under the consideration of line balance. The proposed approach determines both robot type and number of robots required in each workstation such that the standard deviatio n of workstation output rates of all workstations is minimized. This c apacity planning procedure is a two-stage approach including (1) a cap acity planning integer programming model, and (2) a simulation adjustm ent process. The mathematical model determines an initial prototype of a robotic assembly line in deterministic fashion. This is then automa tically converted to a simulation model. Heuristic rules and adjustmen t procedure are also developed to identify potential bottleneck workst ations and to propose new robot assignments (both type and number) in the simulation adjustment stage. Performance evaluation of 10 cases ha s shown promising results for the proposed procedure.