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Balancing assembly lines: an industrial case study

Author

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  • S D Lapierre

    (Ecole Polytechnique)

  • A B Ruiz

    (CRT and Faculté des Sciences de l’Administration, Université Laval)

Abstract

This paper presents a case study where a practical balancing problem for an assembly line of appliances with two sides and two different heights is solved with an enhanced priority-based heuristic. We show how to adapt such heuristic to account for the practical aspects of industrial applications. We also show that a good use of logic and randomness in the algorithm is the key to allow the heuristic to find good solutions. In order to speed up its implementation and to facilitate software maintenance, we have implemented the heuristic on MsAccess97. It takes less than 1 min on a standard PC to solve a problem having 248 tasks, 400 precedence constraints, and four task attributes. Although this is slower than if it would have been implemented on a compilable language, the benefits of such computer environment largely outweigh its low speed.

Suggested Citation

  • S D Lapierre & A B Ruiz, 2004. "Balancing assembly lines: an industrial case study," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 55(6), pages 589-597, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:55:y:2004:i:6:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601708
    DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601708
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Scholl, Armin & Voß, Stefan, 1994. "Simple assembly line balancing : heuristic approaches," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 49132, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    2. Wen-Chyuan Chiang, 1998. "The application of a tabu search metaheuristic to the assembly line balancing problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 77(0), pages 209-227, January.
    3. Roger V. Johnson, 1988. "Optimally Balancing Large Assembly Lines with "Fable"," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 240-253, February.
    4. Scholl, Armin & Voß, S., 1994. "A note on fast , effective heuristics for simple assembly line balancing problems," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 8555, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Fleszar, Krzysztof & Hindi, Khalil S., 2003. "An enumerative heuristic and reduction methods for the assembly line balancing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 606-620, March.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte & Scholl, Armin, 2007. "A classification of assembly line balancing problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 183(2), pages 674-693, December.
    2. Scholl, Armin & Fliedner, Malte & Boysen, Nils, 2010. "Absalom: Balancing assembly lines with assignment restrictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(3), pages 688-701, February.
    3. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte & Scholl, Armin, 2008. "Assembly line balancing: Which model to use when," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 509-528, February.
    4. Becker, Christian & Scholl, Armin, 2009. "Balancing assembly lines with variable parallel workplaces: Problem definition and effective solution procedure," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(2), pages 359-374, December.
    5. 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.
    6. Lopes, Thiago Cantos & Sikora, C.G.S. & Molina, Rafael Gobbi & Schibelbain, Daniel & Rodrigues, L.C.A. & Magatão, Leandro, 2017. "Balancing a robotic spot welding manufacturing line: An industrial case study," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(3), pages 1033-1048.
    7. Dashuang Li & Chaoyong Zhang & Xinyu Shao & Wenwen Lin, 2016. "A multi-objective TLBO algorithm for balancing two-sided assembly line with multiple constraints," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 725-739, August.
    8. Diefenbach, Johannes & Stolletz, Raik, 2022. "Stochastic assembly line balancing: General bounds and reliability-based branch-and-bound algorithm," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(2), pages 589-605.
    9. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte & Scholl, Armin, 2009. "Sequencing mixed-model assembly lines: Survey, classification and model critique," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 192(2), pages 349-373, January.
    10. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte, 2008. "A versatile algorithm for assembly line balancing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 184(1), pages 39-56, January.
    11. Özcan, Ugur, 2010. "Balancing stochastic two-sided assembly lines: A chance-constrained, piecewise-linear, mixed integer program and a simulated annealing algorithm," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 205(1), pages 81-97, August.
    12. Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda & Jordi Pereira & Harold Torrez-Meruvia & Mariona Vilà, 2021. "A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem with a Fixed Number of Workstations," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-19, September.
    13. Yılmaz Delice & Emel Kızılkaya Aydoğan & Uğur Özcan & Mehmet Sıtkı İlkay, 2017. "Balancing two-sided U-type assembly lines using modified particle swarm optimization algorithm," 4OR, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 37-66, March.
    14. Wen-Chyuan Chiang & Timothy L. Urban & Chunyong Luo, 2016. "Balancing stochastic two-sided assembly lines," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(20), pages 6232-6250, October.

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