Research on balancing and sequencing problems of flexible mixed model assembly lines with alternative precedence relations

Abstract

To tackle the balancing and sequencing problems of flexible mixed model assembly lines with alternative precedence relations, If–then rules and AND/OR graphs are adopted as modelling tools to replace precedence graphs that have limitations in representing alternative precedence relations. Mixed integer linear programming (MILP) and constraint programming (CP) models are established respectively. Moreover, an iterative decomposition method is developed to deal with large-sized problems. Computational experiments on different scales are carried out to test those methods. The computational results reveal that the performance of CP is better than MILP especially when more OR relations exist. And the iterative decomposition method outperforms MILP and CP in terms of solution quality and time.