Balancing and Sequencing of Assembly Lines

The book on hand describes decision problems which arise in flow -line production systems and proposes adequate solution methods. Flow -line production systems are present in different industrial environments and are utilized to manufacture a large variety of products. Usually, several models (versions) of a standardized product differing from each other by optional components and equipment have to be as sembled jointly on (mixed-model) assembly lines. Two main types of decision problems have to be solved when such production systems are installed and operat ed. The assembly line balancing problem consists of partitioning the assembly work (of each model) among different stations of a line. This medium-term problem is connected with the short-term problem of fmding an operating sequence of the models required to meet customer demands (mixed-model sequencing problem). These problem types are discussed and classified in Part I of this work. Different versions of balancing and sequencing problems are defmed and arranged within a hierarchical planning system. Since the optimization problems mentioned above are NP-hard, a lot of research work has been done so far in order to develop procedures which provide acceptable solutions within an appropriate amount of computation time on a computer system. Part II of the book surveys existing procedures and presents a number of very promising new solution methods for several versions of both basic problem types. Comprehensive numerical investigations showing the effectiveness of the new methods are reported.