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Abstract
A novel line balancing problem is considered. It differs from assembly line balancing problems in that the operations of each workstation are partitioned into blocks of simultaneously executed (parallel) operations. The blocks of each workstation are executed sequentially. For the line design stage considered in this paper, the compatibility (inclusion and exclusion) constraints for grouping operations into blocks and workstations as well as precedence constraints are known. The goal is to minimize a weighted sum of the number of workstations and the number of blocks while achieving a desired cycle time and satisfying all the constraints. The developed exact and heuristic methods are based on a mixed-integer programming approach. Experimental results are reported.
Acknowledgements
This work is partially supported by ISTC project B-986, INTAS project 03-51-5501 and European coordination action CODESNET. This paper was finished when the first author was an Invited Professor in the Queen's School of Business, Kingston, Canada.
Notes
*Failed to find optimal solution within 10 hours.
* Failed to find optimum solution within 10 hours.