Production planning to support mixed-model assembly

A mixed-model assembly line is widely used nowadays in industry. Effectively applying mixed-model assembly can result in smooth part usage and balanced workloads on the assembly line. The problem of production planning in terms of scheduling various models on an assembly line over a time horizon is studied here. The problem assumes that each model has a given range of production days within the planning horizon. An industrial production system is presented to demonstrate the application of this problem. A two-phase procedure that generates an initial solution and makes further improvement is developed. The procedure is evaluated using randomly generated problems and an industrial example.