ASSEMBLY LINE BALANCING IMPLEMENTATION IN MINOR AND SUB ASSEMBLY WORK SHOP AT SHIPYARDS

2021 ◽  
Vol 158 (A2) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Ozkok ◽  
M K Kasikci ◽  
I H Helvacioglu

Recently, the competitive environment is very tough in shipbuilding industry and under these circumstances, manufacturing a ship in a shorter time becomes significantly important in order to meet the customer demands. Therefore, it is hard to do that by using traditional manufacturing techniques. The shipyards located in Turkey usually have functional locations for the machines and this situation often causes longer production times. Instead of this, assembly lines should be redesigned as workshops in the shipyard. Prefabrication work unit is a good example in which an assembly line is needed to be designed. In this study, an assembly line design for prefabrication work unit was performed. For this, assignments of work operations to work shops were carried out by using Largest Set Rule Algorithm and some alternatives were created according to compare the different values of cycle time. These alternatives were simulated by using a production simulation program and the most appropriate assembly line design was presented.

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 119-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmut Kayar ◽  
Öykü Ceren Bulur

This study primarily includes theoretical information on the performance and lost productive time of a firm. Furthermore t-shirt sewing operations of a garment firm were analysed and time measurement for each operation was carried out by the time keeping method. By considering the measurements obtained, different performance estimations, the firm’s lost productive time rates, and the standard time was calculated within 5 different scenarios. According to each sewing standard time obtained, the assembly line balancing practice was carried out using the Hoffman method. Later on results of the assembly line balancing were compared, and the importance of employee performance assessment and its lost productive time rates for firms were discussed. The aim of the study was to emphasize the value of impeccable determination of the employee performance assessment and lost productive time rates. Consequently garment firms will be more cautious in calculating the standard time and will be able to reach their production target within the accurate measurement they obtain.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 638-663
Author(s):  
Mohd Fadzil Faisae Ab. Rashid ◽  
Ahmad Nasser Mohd Rose ◽  
Nik Mohd Zuki Nik Mohamed ◽  
Fadhlur Rahman Mohd Romlay

Purpose This paper aims to propose an improved Moth Flame Optimization (I-MFO) algorithm to optimize the cost-oriented two-sided assembly line balancing (2S-ALB). Prior to the decision to assemble a new product, the manufacturer will carefully study and optimize the related cost to set up and run the assembly line. For the first time in ALB, the power cost is modeled together with the equipment, set up and labor costs. Design/methodology/approach I-MFO was proposed by introducing a global reference flame mechanism to guide the global search direction. A set of benchmark problems was used to test the I-MFO performance. Apart from the benchmark problems, a case study from a body shop assembly was also presented. Findings The computational experiment indicated that the I-MFO obtained promising results compared to comparison algorithms, which included the particle swarm optimization, Cuckoo Search and ant colony optimization. Meanwhile, the results from the case study showed that the proposed cost-oriented 2S-ALB model was able to assist the manufacturer in making better decisions for different planning periods. Originality/value The main contribution of this work is the global reference flame mechanism for MFO algorithm. Furthermore, this research introduced a new cost-oriented model that considered power consumption in the assembly line design.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Nourmohammadi ◽  
Hamidreza Eskandari

Purpose This paper aims to optimize the configuration of assembly lines (ALs) considering the two long-term decision problems within the line balancing and part feeding (PF) contexts, when the supermarket concept is applied in PF. Design/methodology/approach To this purpose, a bi-level mathematical model is proposed to deal with the assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) and supermarket location problem (SLP) during the strategic decision-making phase of ALs’ configuration. The proposed model is applied on the known test problems taken from the ALBP literature to verify its performance. Findings The computational results verify that when the proposed structure is applied, the resulting AL configurations are optimized from both ALBP and SLP considerations in terms of the number of stations and line efficiency as well as supermarket transportation and installation costs. Originality/value No study has yet dealt with the long-term decision problem of configuring ALs considering both ALBP and SLP. Also, this study validates the effect of the ALBP on the SLP solutions as two long-term interrelated decision problems.


Author(s):  
Konstantinos N. Genikomsakis ◽  
◽  
Vassilios D. Tourassis

Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) aims at optimally assigning the work elements required to assemble a product to an ordered sequence of workstations, while satisfying precedence constraints. Notwithstanding the advances and developments in ALB over the years, recent and thorough surveys on this field reveal that only a small percentage of companies employ ALB procedures to configure their assembly lines. This paradox may be attributed, to some extent, to the fact that ALB is addressed mostly under ideal conditions. Despite the time variability inherent in manufacturing tasks, there is a strong research trend towards designing and implementing algorithms that consider ALB on a deterministic basis and focus on the optimality of the proposed task assignments according to existing ALB performance measures. In this paper, the need to assess the performance of the proposed solutions of various algorithms in the literature is corroborated through simulation experiments on a benchmark ALB problem under more realistic conditions. A novel ALB index, namely the Effective Cycle Time, ECT, is proposed to assess the quality of alternative assembly line configurations in paced assembly lines operating under task times variations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 748 ◽  
pp. 1183-1187
Author(s):  
Ali A.J. Adham ◽  
Hamzah Bin Zainuddin ◽  
Fadilah Binti Siali ◽  
Noor Azlinna Binti Azizan

Assembly line design is an important part of the production system in manufacturing processes. An assembly line, which consists of a sequence of workstations, is an efficient method of manufacturing high-volume products such as automobile parts and microcomputers. In designing an assembly line, it is common practice to "balance" the line so that a more uniform flow is maintained. The Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) scheduler evaluates the effect of the different online sequence of parts on production cycle, balances workload and utilization ratio, minimizes span of the assembly line. The simulation model approach in this study to obtain the scenarios which are reducing the unbalancing time. The simulator presented herein, named Assembly Line Simulator (ALS), can be used as supporting tool in finding solutions of the assembly line balancing problem. Throughout the scenarios of the optimum method will be chosen which scenario is represented minimum idle time it will be the optimum balance of the assembly line.


Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Bo Xin ◽  
Pan Wang

In order to improve the balance and load equilibrium of aircraft assembly lines, and to enhance the management of on-site resources, a Type-E balancing method was proposed based on the mobile operation of assembly personnel in the aircraft assembly line. This method was aimed to minimize the smoothness index of the overall assembly line and each assembly station, and also to minimize manpower costs. First, a model of personnel flow and an assembly line balancing model were constructed based on the characteristics of aircraft assembly lines. Next, an Accelerated Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (ABPSO) based on improved sig function was designed in order to improve the original stability and convergence of the standard binary particle swarm algorithm. Finally, the validity of the method was verified with a real fuselage assembly line and the results show the effectiveness.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 93-134
Author(s):  
Parames Chutima

This paper presents the findings from the survey of articles published on the assembly line balancing problems (ALBPs) during 2014-2018. Before proceeding a comprehensive literature review, the ineffectiveness of the previous ALBP classification structures is discussed and a new classification scheme based on the layout configurations of assembly lines is subsequently proposed. The research trend in each layout of assembly lines is highlighted through the graphical presentations. The challenges in the ALBPs are also pinpointed as a technical guideline for future research works.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1868-1892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binghai Zhou ◽  
Qiong Wu

Purpose The extensive applications of the industrial robots have made the optimization of assembly lines more complicated. The purpose of this paper is to develop a balancing method of both workstation time and station area to improve the efficiency and productivity of the robotic assembly lines. A tradeoff was made between two conflicting objective functions, minimizing the number of workstations and minimizing the area of each workstation. Design/methodology/approach This research proposes an optimal method for balancing robotic assembly lines with space consideration and reducing robot changeover and area for tools and fixtures to further minimize assembly line area and cycle time. Due to the NP-hard nature of the considered problem, an improved multi-objective immune clonal selection algorithm is proposed to solve this constrained multi-objective optimization problem, and a special coding scheme is designed for the problem. To enhance the performance of the algorithm, several strategies including elite strategy and global search are introduced. Findings A set of instances of different problem scales are optimized and the results are compared with two other high-performing multi-objective algorithms to evaluate the efficiency and superiority of the proposed algorithm. It is found that the proposed method can efficiently solve the real-world size case of time and space robotic assembly line balancing problems. Originality/value For the first time in the robotic assembly line balancing problems, an assignment-based tool area and a sequence-based changeover time are took into consideration. Furthermore, a mathematical model with bi-objective functions of minimizing the number of workstations and area of each station was developed. To solve the proposed problem, an improved multi-objective immune clonal selection algorithm was proposed and a special coding scheme is designed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Yilmaz ◽  
Mustafa Yilmaz

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is balancing multi-manned assembly lines with load-balancing constraints in addition to conventional ones Most research works about the multi-manned assembly line balancing problems are focused on the conventional industrial measures that minimize total number of workers, number of multi-manned workstations or both. Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides a remedial constraint for the model to balance task load density for each worker in workstations. Findings – Comparisons between the proposed mathematical model and the existing multi-manned mathematical model show a quite promising better task load density performance for the proposed approach. Originality/value – In this paper, a mathematical model that combines the minimization of multi-manned stations, worker numbers and difference of task load density of workers is proposed for the first time.


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