Abstract

The assembly line balancing problem arises and has to be solved when an assembly line has to be configured or redesigned. It consists of distributing the total workload for manufacturing any unit of the product to be assembled among the work stations along the line. The so-called simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP), a basic version of the general problem, has attracted attention of researchers and practitioners of operations research for almost half a century.

In this paper, we give an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of SALBP research with a special emphasis on recent outstanding and guiding contributions to the field.

Keywords: Assembly line balancing; Mass-production; Literature survey; Combinatorial optimization; Branch-and-bound; Heuristics

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP)

3. Exact solution procedures for SALBP-1

3.1. Lower bounds

3.1.1. Bin packing bounds

3.1.2. One-machine scheduling bound

3.1.3. Destructive improvement bounds

3.1.4. Example for bound computation

3.2. Construction schemes

3.3. Dominance rules

3.4. Reduction rules

3.5. Dynamic programming procedures

3.6. Branch and bound procedures

3.6.1. Search strategies

3.6.2. Comparison of search strategies

3.6.3. Comparison of construction schemes and complete procedures

4. Exact solution procedures for SALBP-2 and SALBP-E

4.1. Lower bounds for SALBP-2

4.2. Exact solution procedures for SALBP-2

4.2.1. Iterated search methods

4.2.2. Direct solution approaches

4.3. Search methods for SALBP-E

5. Heuristic approaches for different versions of SALBP

5.1. Constructive procedures

5.1.1. Priority rule based procedures for SALBP-1

5.1.2. Incomplete enumeration procedures

5.1.3. Search methods for SALBP-2 and SALBP-E

5.2. Genetic algorithms

5.2.1. Encoding schemes and genetic operators

5.2.2. Fitness functions

5.2.3. Further components and computational results

5.3. Local search and metastrategies

5.3.1. Moves and neighborhood definition

5.3.2. Tabu search for SALBP-2

5.3.3. Tabu search for SALBP-1

5.3.4. Simulated annealing (SA) procedures

5.3.5. LP-based improvement procedure

5.3.6. Ant colony optimization approach

6. Conclusions and further research

References