Abstract
The general assembly line balancing problem with setups (GALBPS) was recently defined in the literature. It adds sequence-dependent setup time considerations to the classical simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP) as follows: whenever a task is assigned next to another at the same workstation, a setup time must be added to compute the global workstation time, thereby providing the task sequence inside each workstation. This paper proposes heuristic procedures, based on priority rules, for solving GALBPS, many of which are an improvement upon heuristic procedures published to date.
Acknowledgments
The authors are very grateful to Professor Albert Corominas (Technical University of Catalonia) and to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which have helped to enhance this paper. This paper was supported by the Spanish MCyT projects DPI2004-03472 and DPI2007-61905, co-financed by FEDER.