EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT OF AUTOMOTIVE ASSEMBLY LINES USING SIMPLE ASSEMBLY LINE BALANCING PROBLEM TYPE-E

Abstract

Background: An assembly line is a technique used in mass production industries, especially in the automotive industry; it consists of many workstations organized along a conveyor belt system or other material handling equipment. The assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) involves assigning assembly tasks to workstations on the line while meeting optimization goals. It is considered a critical issue in operations management because it directly affects the productivity of the entire manufacturing system. Methods: Based on the mathematical model previously developed by (Esmaeilbeigi, Naderi, and Charkhgard 2015) for the E-type SALBP problem, we proposed a new model adaptable to the automotive sector. The proposed model uses new feasibility rules and optimizes constraints in order to propose better balancing results and efficiency. Results: A computational experiment is presented in this article, using the newly developed model to balance an assembly line in an automotive manufacturing plant consisting of 5 workstations. Conclusions: The experimental results show that the proposed model improved the line efficiency by 15%, which proves that the proposed method has good robustness.