Mixed-Model Assembly Line Scheduling in Consideration of Assembly Time.

Abstract

In a mixed-model assembly line problem, two objectives has been proposed to decide the product scheduling. One is to minimize the work congestion and the other is keeping the consumption rate of each part. In JIT production system, the latter one is more important, so the goal chasing method (GC) has been prposed to achieve this goal. The difference of assembly time among each product was not cnsidered in any solution algorithms. Recently, the time based goal chasing method (TBGC) has been proposed in which the different assembly time among each product is considered. The good point of TBGC is able to consider the idle time contained in an assembly line. However, TBGC is only applied to a single work station problem. In this paper, TBGC is applied to an assembly line and numerical experiments are presented.