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The stochastic U‐line balancing problem

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  • Franco Guerriero
  • John Miltenburg

Abstract

A U‐line arranges tasks around a U‐shaped production line and organizes them into stations that can cross from one side of the line to the other. In addition to improving visibility and communication between operators on the line, which facilitates problem‐solving and quality improvement, U‐lines can reduce the total number of operators required on the line and make rebalancing the line easier compared to the traditional, straight production line. This paper studies the (type 1) U‐line balancing problem when task completion times are stochastic. Stochastic completion times occur when differences between operators cause completion times to vary somewhat and when machine processing times vary. A recursive algorithm is presented for finding the optimal solution when completion times have any distribution function. An equivalent shortest path network is also presented. An improvement for the special case of normally distributed task completion times is given. A computational study to determine the characteristics of instances that can be solved by the algorithms shows that they are able to solve instances of practical size (like the 114 Japanese and U.S. U‐lines studied in a literature review paper). © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003

Suggested Citation

  • Franco Guerriero & John Miltenburg, 2003. "The stochastic U‐line balancing problem," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(1), pages 31-57, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:navres:v:50:y:2003:i:1:p:31-57
    DOI: 10.1002/nav.10043
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    1. 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.
    2. Emel Kızılkaya Aydoğan & Yılmaz Delice & Uğur Özcan & Cevriye Gencer & Özkan Bali, 2019. "Balancing stochastic U-lines using particle swarm optimization," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 97-111, January.
    3. Pirogov, Aleksandr & Gurevsky, Evgeny & Rossi, André & Dolgui, Alexandre, 2021. "Robust balancing of transfer lines with blocks of uncertain parallel tasks under fixed cycle time and space restrictions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 290(3), pages 946-955.
    4. Daniel Leitold & Agnes Vathy-Fogarassy & Janos Abonyi, 2019. "Empirical working time distribution-based line balancing with integrated simulated annealing and dynamic programming," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 27(2), pages 455-473, June.

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