As. Simaria et Pm. Vilarinho, The simple assembly line balancing problem with parallel workstations - A simulated annealing approach, INT J IN EN, 8(3), 2001, pp. 230-240
Citations number
21
Categorie Soggetti
Engineering Management /General
Journal title
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING-THEORY APPLICATIONS AND PRACTICE
This work presents a new mathematical programming model for the simple asse
mbly line balancing problem with parallel workstations that allows the user
to control the way workstations are 'parallelised'. As in the conventional
procedures the user can limit the number of replicas allowed for each work
station, but in this novel approach the user can also define a minimum task
time to trigger the replication of the workstations. Another important cha
racteristic of the model is that it simultaneously minimises the number of
workstation and smoothes the workload among them. Due to the model complexi
ty a simulated annealing approach is proposed to solve it. An example is us
ed for illustration and computational experience is provided. The computati
onal tests show that the performance of the proposed procedure is quite goo
d, taking into account the problem complexity.
Significance: Assembly lines are employed for high volumes of output, so th
e global savings that result from a small reduction in unit costs, fostered
by a correctly balanced line, can be important, The proposed model introdu
ces a more realistic approach to assembly line balancing than previous ones
.