Abstract
In practical production, the balance of the assembly lines is always destroyed by many factors, e.g., demand fluctuations, disruptions caused by workstation breakdowns or shutdowns, and changes of the work force. Therefore, this paper addresses the type II rebalancing problem for the two-sided assembly lines (TALRBP-II), which are widely utilized to assemble large-size high-volume products. As we all know that TALBP-II (two-sided assembly line balancing problem type-II) is NP-hard, TALRBP-II is its extension and much more complex. In order to solve this problem, a mathematical model with the objectives of minimizing cycle time and rebalancing cost is proposed. Constraint programming (CP) method is applied to optimize the model and a workstation-oriented heuristic algorithm is designed to solve the problem. An example is presented to illustrate the procedure of the proposed algorithm, and the best solution obtained verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
Highlights
Two-sided assembly line (TAL, Figure 1) is a typical production organization form and is widely used in assembling large-sized high-volume products, such as cars, trucks, buses, shovel loader
In the TAL, operators work in parallel on the two sides (left-side (L) and rightside (R)) of the conveyor belt, and a pair of stations on the two sides is called as a matedstation or a workstation, and each one is called a companion for the other
According to the different of objective, TAL balancing problem (TALBP) can be categorized into three types [3]: the type I is mainly to minimize the number of stations with a given cycle time, type II is looking for the minimum cycle time with a predetermined number of stations, while type III focus on optimizing smoothness and efficiency of an AL
Summary
Two-sided assembly line (TAL, Figure 1) is a typical production organization form and is widely used in assembling large-sized high-volume products, such as cars, trucks, buses, shovel loader. As mentioned in [5], in industrial practices, it is hardly ever to build a new AL to meet all the need arising from changes of production and the majority of AL balance is conducted for reconfiguration instead of first time installation, i.e. rebalancing problem. Assembly line rebalancing problem (ALRBP) has been mentioned by numerous researchers since Schofield [6], related theories and methods research are considerably limited. Zhang et al [16] presented a modified non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (MNSGA-II) for a real-life multiobjective two-sided assembly line rebalancing problem (MTALRBP) with modifications of production demand, line’s structure and production process. The objectives are to minimize the cycle time and rebalancing costs synchronously. A workstation-oriented heuristic algorithm is proposed to tackle the TALRBP-II with multi-objectives, including minimizing cycle time and rebalancing cost.
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