A multi-manned assembly line balancing problem with classified teams: a new approach

Within team-oriented approaches, tasks are assigned to teams before being assigned to workstations as a reality of industry. So it becomes clear, which workers assemble which tasks.

Team numbers of the assembly line can increase with the number of tasks, but at the same time, due to physical situations of the stations, there will be limitations of maximum working team numbers in a station. For this purpose, heuristic assembly line balancing (ALB) procedure is used and mathematical model is developed for the problem.

Well-known assembly line test problems widely used in the literature are solved to indicate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach in practice.

This paper draws attention to ALB problem in which workers have been assigned to teams in advance due to the need for specialized skills or equipment on the line for the first time.