A balancing problem for mixed model assembly lines with a paced moving conveyor

We state a balancing problem for mixed model assembly lines with a paced moving conveyor as: Given the daily assembling sequence of the models, the tasks of each model, the precedence relations among the tasks, and the operations parameters of the assembly line, assign the tasks of the models to the workstations so as to minimize the total overload time. Several characteristics of the problem are investigated. A line‐balancing heuristic is proposed based on a lower bound of the total overload time. A practical procedure is provided for estimating the deviation of any given line‐balance solution from the theoretical optimum. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the methodology. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.     

Modeling and analysis of a mixed‐model assembly line with stochastic operation times

We consider a mixed‐model assembly line (MMAL) comprised a set of workstations and a conveyor. The workstations are arranged in a serial configuration. The conveyor moves at a constant speed along the workstations. Initial units belonging to different models are successively fed onto the conveyor, and they are moved by the conveyor to pass through the workstations to gradually generate final products. All assembling tasks are manually performed with operation times to be stochastic. An important performance measure of MMALs is overload times that refer to uncompleted operations for operators within their work zones. This paper establishes a method to analyze the expected overload times for MMALs with stochastic operation times. The operation processes of operators form discrete time nonhomogeneous Markov processes with continuous state spaces. For a given daily production schedule, the expected overload times involve in analyzing the Markov processes for finite horizon. Based on some important properties of the performance measure, we propose an efficient approach for calculating the expected overload times. Numerical computations show that the results are very satisfactory. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007