DEVELOPING NEW HEURISTIC METHOD TO BALANCE SINGLE MODEL ASSEMBLY LINE

Abstract: As a part of manufacturing system, the balancing of assembly lines has been one of the most valuable research areas to accomplish the real problems related to them. There are several types of assembly lines. In this paper, new heuristic method for solving single model assembly lines balancing problem are described. The objective of balancing in this paper is increasing the efficiency of the line by assigning the tasks to stations such that the number of stations is minimized for a given cycle time. This method is computerized (programmed) and coded in C# (C sharp) language. This program is called (Assembly line balancing-Method of Merging Shortest and Longest Operation) symbolized by (MMSLO), which is based on merging two of the most common heuristic methods " Shortest Operation Time" and "Longest Operation Time" methods. In this paper, the method is implemented on three theoretical cases that taken from scientific references. The results of the (MMSLO) program compared with the results of the separate basic method (shortest operation time and longest operation time) that existed in (production and operations management, quantitative methods) software that symbolized by (POM-QM) for all cases. The results show that method in (MMSLO) program is better than the basic two methods in (POM-QM) software.

Keywords: Assembly line balancing; single model assembly lines; heuristic methods; Shortest Operation Time; Longest Operation Time.