Balancing assembly lines by considering inconstant task times

This paper introduces the effect of task deterioration in the Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem (SALBP). In many realistic situations, a task will expend more time than it would have expended if it had begun earlier. This phenomenon is known as deteriorating tasks. Therefore we seek an optimal assignment and schedule of tasks in work stations, so as to minimize the number of stations for a given cycle time, which is known as SALBP-1. For this purpose, a mathematical model is proposed. Since the pure SALBP-1 is proved to be NP-hard and the considered problem with additional parameter of deterioration gets more complicated, a genetic algorithm is also developed. Several test problems aresolved to illustrate the proposed approach.

Keywords:

Assembly line balancing , Scheduling , Task deterioration , Genetic Algorithm