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

The classical Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem (SALBP) has been widely enriched over the past few years with many realistic approaches and much effort has been made to reduce the distance between the academic theory and the industrial reality. Despite this effort, the scheduling of the execution of tasks assigned to every workstation following the balancing of the assembly line has been scarcely reported in the scientific literature. This is supposed to be an operational concern that the worker should solve himself, but in several real environments, setups between tasks exist and optimal or near-optimal tasks schedules should be provided inside each workstation. The problem presented in this paper adds sequence-dependent setup time considerations to the classical SALBP in the following way: whenever a task is assigned next to another at the same workstation, a setup time must be added to compute the global workstation time. After formulating a mathematical model for this innovative problem and showing the high combinatorial nature of the problem, eight different heuristic rules and a GRASP algorithm are designed and tested for solving the problem in reasonable computational time.Peer Reviewe

Heuristic procedures for solving the General Assembly Line Balancing Problem with Setups (GALBPS)

The General Assembly Line Balancing Problem with Setups (GALBPS) was recently defined in the literature. It adds sequence-dependent setup time considerations to the classical Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem (SALBP) as follows: whenever a task is assigned next to another at the same workstation, a setup time must be added to compute the global workstation time, thereby providing the task sequence inside each workstation. This paper proposes over 50 priority-rule-based heuristic procedures to solve GALBPS, many of which are an improvement upon heuristic procedures published to date

Balancing mixed-model assembly line to reduce work overload in a multi-level production system

Generating the optimal production schedule for an assembly line, which will balance the workload at all the production stages, is a difficult task considering a variety of practical constraints. Varying customer demand is an important factor to be considered when designing an assembly line. In order to respond to varying customer demand, many companies are attempting to make their production system more flexible/agile or adaptable to change. Due to the volatile nature of market, companies cannot afford to manufacture same type of product for long period of time and neither can maintain high inventory level; to tackle this problem we propose a new approach of balancing mixed-model assembly line in a multi-level production system. The emphasis is on incorporating the effect of set-up times of lower production levels on the final assembly schedule. This will facilitate stabilized workload among and across the stations and effectively balance the production schedule at all production stages. As a result, the proposed model assures that workloads are balanced and setup times are reduced to such an extent that WIP and overall inventories are kept to a low level

Sheduling approach for Microfactories with setup times.

International audienceIn this paper we consider microfactories for manipulation and assembly. These microfactories are composed of several cells containing microrobotic systems capable of a high level of repeatability. The assembly plan of the production is a pipeline of tasks that are performed by the cells. Our aim is to manage the production flow in the case where the cells can be reconfigured to perform different task types. Each cell is in charge of several consecutive tasks. A setup time is necessary to switch from the processing of one task type to another, and multiple intermediate results may be stored temporarily in storage areas to avoid switching the task type after the processing of each product. In this context we assess the optimized use of these storage areas, called buffers, and its impact on the production throughput

An integer programming approach for Balancing and Scheduling in Extended Manufacturing Environment

In the fiercely competitive era induced by expansion of open business archetypes, the managerial aspects of Extended Manufacturing Environments (EMEs) are experiencing growing concerns. There is no scope of leaving a possible operational improvement unexplored. For enhanced operational efficiency and capacity utilization the balancing and scheduling problems of EMEs are, therefore, rightfully considered and an integer programme is proposed in this paper. The model is designed in a spread sheet and solved through What'sBest optimizer. The model capabilities is assessed through a test problem. The results have demonstrated that the model is capable of defining optimized production schedules for EMEs.This study has been conducted under FRGS project (FRGS14- 102-0343) funded by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Malaysia. The authors are grateful to MOHE and Research Management Centre (RMC), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) for their support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Survey on Cost and Profit Oriented Assembly Line Balancing

http://www.nt.ntnu.no/users/skoge/prost/proceedings/ifac2014/media/files/0866.pdfInternational audienceProblems, approaches and analytical models on assembly line balancing that deal explicitly with cost and profit oriented objectives are analysed. This survey paper serves to identify and work on open problems that have wide practical applications. The conclusions derived might give insights in developing decision support systems (DSS) in planning profitable or cost efficient assembly lines