On Assembly-Line Balancing Problems

Abstract

This paper considers three kinds of assembly-line disciplines: assembly lines without parallel subassemblies, lines with parallel subassemblies, and single-product assembly lines. To each such discipline there corresponds a line balancing problem. For the second and third disciplines, feasible (but not necessarily optimal) balances are characterized in terms of the directed graph defining the line. For any feasible balance, the minimum cycle time or assembly time can be computed easily from a certain graph, and a corresponding Gantt diagram determined. For the case of lines with parallel subassemblies, the paper gives a line initialization procedure such that, after initialization, the line can easily be balanced optimally.