On solvingtheassemblylineworkerassignmentandbalancingproblemvia beam search

Certain typesofmanufacturingprocessescanbemodelledbyassemblylinebalancingproblems.Inthis work wedealwithaspecificassemblylinebalancingproblemthatisknownastheassemblyline worker assignmentandbalancingproblem(ALWABP).Thisproblemappearsinsettingswheretasks must beassignedtoworkers,andworkerstoworkstations.Taskprocessingtimesareworkerspecific, and workersmightevenbeincompatiblewithcertaintasks.TheALWABPwasintroducedtomodel assemblylinestypicalforshelteredworkcentersfortheDisabled. In thispaperweintroduceanalgorithmbasedonbeamsearchforsolvingtheALWABPwiththe objectiveofminimizingthecycletimewhengivenafixednumberofworkstations,respectively, workers.ThisproblemversionisdenotedasALWABP-2.Theexperimentalresultsshowthatour algorithmiscurrentlyastate-of-the-artmethodfortheALWABP-2.Incomparisontoresultsfromthe literature,ouralgorithmobtainsbetterorequalresultsinallcases.Moreover,thealgorithmisvery robust forwhatconcernstheapplicationtoprobleminstancesofdifferentcharacteristics.