Work balancing increasingly plays an important role in both the
production and maintenance functions. However, the literature on work balancing
problems in transfer line manufacturing systems provides little information on the
contributions of maintenance technicians and spare parts with a focus on penalty,
technicians’ costs and incentives for staff. Unlike existing reports, the current
investigation attempts to solve the maintenance task balancing problem. It combines
preventive maintenance technicians’ assignments with product demand and spares
utilisation in a transfer line manufacturing system. It uses an optimisation framework that
measures the success of post-line balancing solution performance in a system from a
holistic perspective. The novelty of the approach lies in the integration of technicians and
spare parts theory and the introduction of penalty, technicians’ costs and incentive for
staff. The proposed optimisation method was applied to a case study for detergent
manufacturing system as a means of testing the effectiveness and robustness of the
approach. The results show that the proposed model appears to be effective. Some
simulations were also carried out to complement practical result
