IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uiiexx/v52y2020i2p181-198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Line side placement for shorter assembly line worker paths

Author

Listed:
  • Helmut A. Sedding

Abstract

Placing material containers at moving assembly lines is an intriguing problem because each container position influences worker paths. This optimization is relevant in practice as worker walking time accounts for about 10–15% of total work time. Nonetheless, we find few computational approaches in the literature. We address this gap and model walking time to containers, then optimize their placement. Our findings suggest this reduces walking time of intuitive solutions by an average of 20%, with considerable estimated savings. To investigate the subject, we formulate a quintessential optimization model for basic sequential container placement along the line side. However, even this core problem turns out as strongly NP-complete. Nonetheless, it possesses several polynomial cases that allow to construct a lower bound on the walking time. Moreover, we discover exact and heuristic dominance conditions between partial placements. This facilitates an exact and a truncated branch-and-bound solution algorithm. In extensive tests, they consistently deliver superior performance compared to several mixed integer programming and metaheuristic approaches. To aid practitioners in quickly recognizing instances with high optimization potential even before performing a full optimization, we provide a criterion to estimate it with just few measurements.

Suggested Citation

  • Helmut A. Sedding, 2020. "Line side placement for shorter assembly line worker paths," IISE Transactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(2), pages 181-198, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:uiiexx:v:52:y:2020:i:2:p:181-198
    DOI: 10.1080/24725854.2018.1508929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24725854.2018.1508929
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/24725854.2018.1508929?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Helmut A. Sedding, 2020. "Scheduling jobs with a V-shaped time-dependent processing time," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 751-768, December.
    2. 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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uiiexx:v:52:y:2020:i:2:p:181-198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/uiie .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.