A Dynamic Programming Based Heuristic for the Assembly Line Balancing Problem

Bautista, Joaquín; Pereira, Jordi

Keywords: production, assembly line balancing, Car manufacturing, Bounded Dynamic Programming

Abstract

The simple assembly line balancing problem is the simplification of a real problem associated to the assignment of the elementary tasks required for assembly of a product in an assembly line. This problem has been extensively studied in the literature for more than half a century. The present work proposes a new procedure to solve the problem we call Bounded Dynamic Programming. This use of the term Bounded is associated not only with the use of bounds to reduce the state space but also to the reduction of such space based on heuristics. This procedure is capable of obtaining an optimal solution rate of 267 out of 269 instances, which have been used in previous works, thus obtaining the best-known performance for the problem. These results are an improvement from any previous procedure found in the literature even when using smaller computing times.

Más información

Título de la Revista: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH
Volumen: 194
Número: 3
Editorial: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Fecha de publicación: 2009
Página de inicio: 787
Página final: 794
Idioma: English
DOI:

10.1016/j.ejor.2008.01.016

Notas: WOS Core Collection ISI SCOPUS