Title: Multi-manned assembly line balancing using exact solution approach - a case study of a tricycle assembly line

Authors: Ashish Yadav; Sunil Agrawal

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing, Dumna Road, Jabalpur 482005, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing, Dumna Road, Jabalpur 482005, India

Abstract: Multi-manned assembly lines are designed to produce high volume products. In this paper, multi-manned assembly line balancing problem (MALBP) is addressed in which a group of workers simultaneously performs different tasks on a workstation. A tricycle company data is used to solve the problem with the objectives of minimising the cycle time and number of workstations. The problem is solved in two stages. In the first stage, the problem is solved with the objective of minimising the cycle time. The output from the results obtained is used in the second stage to minimise the number of workstations. A mixed integer programming formulation for the problem is proposed and is solved using Lingo 16.0. Since multi-manned assembly line balancing problem is NP-hard, it is first tested on a set of test example problems and is later on applied to solve the tricycle case study problem. The results show that the numbers of workstations are reduced which leads to a reduction in the number of workers and idle time.

Keywords: MALBP; mathematical model; case study problem; optimisation; Lingo 16 solver.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2022.122670

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2022 Vol.41 No.3, pp.241 - 259

Received: 04 Mar 2019
Accepted: 25 Jul 2019
Published online: 05 May 2022 *

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