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Incorporating ergonomic risks into assembly line balancing

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  • Otto, Alena
  • Scholl, Armin

Abstract

In manufacturing, control of ergonomic risks at manual workplaces is a necessity commanded by legislation, care for health of workers and economic considerations. Methods for estimating ergonomic risks of workplaces are integrated into production routines at most firms that use the assembly-type of production. Assembly line re-balancing, i.e., re-assignment of tasks to workers, is an effective and, in case that no additional workstations are required, inexpensive method to reduce ergonomic risks. In our article, we show that even though most ergonomic risk estimation methods involve nonlinear functions, they can be integrated into assembly line balancing techniques at low additional computational cost. Our computational experiments indicate that re-balancing often leads to a substantial mitigation of ergonomic risks.

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  • Otto, Alena & Scholl, Armin, 2011. "Incorporating ergonomic risks into assembly line balancing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(2), pages 277-286, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:212:y:2011:i:2:p:277-286
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    2. Alena Otto & Nils Boysen & Armin Scholl & Rico Walter, 2017. "Ergonomic workplace design in the fast pick area," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(4), pages 945-975, October.
    3. Bautista, Joaquín & Batalla-García, Cristina & Alfaro-Pozo, Rocío, 2016. "Models for assembly line balancing by temporal, spatial and ergonomic risk attributes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 251(3), pages 814-829.
    4. Sebnem Demirkol Akyol & Adil Baykasoğlu, 2019. "ErgoALWABP: a multiple-rule based constructive randomized search algorithm for solving assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem under ergonomic risk factors," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 291-302, January.
    5. Otto, Alena & Li, Xiyu, 2020. "Product sequencing in multiple-piece-flow assembly lines," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    6. Boysen, Nils & Schulze, Philipp & Scholl, Armin, 2022. "Assembly line balancing: What happened in the last fifteen years?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(3), pages 797-814.
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    10. Marco Trost & Thorsten Claus & Frank Herrmann, 2022. "Social Sustainability in Production Planning: A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-31, July.
    11. Boysen, Nils & Emde, Simon & Hoeck, Michael & Kauderer, Markus, 2015. "Part logistics in the automotive industry: Decision problems, literature review and research agenda," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 107-120.
    12. Battaïa, Olga & Dolgui, Alexandre, 2013. "A taxonomy of line balancing problems and their solutionapproaches," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 259-277.
    13. Mossa, G. & Boenzi, F. & Digiesi, S. & Mummolo, G. & Romano, V.A., 2016. "Productivity and ergonomic risk in human based production systems: A job-rotation scheduling model," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(P4), pages 471-477.
    14. Koltai, Tamás & Dimény, Imre & Gallina, Viola & Gaal, Alexander & Sepe, Chiara, 2021. "An analysis of task assignment and cycle times when robots are added to human-operated assembly lines, using mathematical programming models," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    15. Minghai Yuan & Hongyan Yu & Jinting Huang & Aimin Ji, 2019. "Reconfigurable assembly line balancing for cloud manufacturing," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 30(6), pages 2391-2405, August.
    16. Kucukkoc, Ibrahim & Li, Zixiang & Karaoglan, Aslan D. & Zhang, David Z., 2018. "Balancing of mixed-model two-sided assembly lines with underground workstations: A mathematical model and ant colony optimization algorithm," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 228-243.
    17. Sternatz, Johannes, 2014. "Enhanced multi-Hoffmann heuristic for efficiently solving real-world assembly line balancing problems in automotive industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 235(3), pages 740-754.
    18. Tiacci, Lorenzo & Mimmi, Mario, 2018. "Integrating ergonomic risks evaluation through OCRA index and balancing/sequencing decisions for mixed model stochastic asynchronous assembly lines," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 112-138.
    19. Bogataj, David & Battini, Daria & Calzavara, Martina & Persona, Alessandro, 2019. "The ageing workforce challenge: Investments in collaborative robots or contribution to pension schemes, from the multi-echelon perspective," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 97-106.
    20. Otto, Alena & Otto, Christian & Scholl, Armin, 2013. "Systematic data generation and test design for solution algorithms on the example of SALBPGen for assembly line balancing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(1), pages 33-45.
    21. Ozdemir, Rifat & Sarigol, Ilkan & AlMutairi, Sarah & AlMeea, Sarah & Murad, Abrar & Naqi, Aseel & AlNasser, Noor, 2021. "Fuzzy multi-objective model for assembly line balancing with ergonomic risks consideration," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    22. Yildiz Kose & Hatice Nida Civan & Ertugrul Ayyildiz & Emre Cevikcan, 2022. "An Interval Valued Pythagorean Fuzzy AHP–TOPSIS Integrated Model for Ergonomic Assessment of Setup Process under SMED," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-30, October.

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