Presentation and implementation multi-objective mathematical models to balance the assembly line

Abstract

The use of assembly lines is one of the important approaches in mass production of industrial products. Imbalance of assembly lines increases cycle time and idle times, resulting in reduced production rates, line efficiency, and increased system costs, which ultimately lead to low productivity. A hybrid model assembly line is a type of production line on which various models of products are assembled. These assembly lines are increasingly accepted in the industry in order to overcome the diversity of customer demand. The hybrid model assembly line is able to respond quickly to sudden changes in demand for different models of a product without maintaining a large inventory.The purpose of this paper is to present a multi-objective integer linear mathematical programming model for balancing assembly lines, which is solved using the general criteria method. The three objective functions considered in this model are: (1) Minimizing cycle time (2) Minimize the idle time of each station and (3) increase the efficiency of the assembly line. In order to investigate the model, Iran-Shargh Neishabour Company has been considered as a case study. After implementing the proposed model of the paper, the results show the optimal performance of the proposed model and the studied parameters in line balancing have been significantly improved.

Keywords

• assembly line balancing
• multi-product assembly line
• multi-objective optimization
• linear programming
• cycle time