Abstract:
The objective of this study is to resolve the balancing problem comprising a shared U-shaped assembly line which is exclusively designed by a Simulated Annealing Algorithm. The proposed algorithm may be utilized in medium and large scale problems. This approach envisages an efficient mechanism which associates a large solution space search for revealing an optimal solution. The existing balancing problem is just a conventional straight assembly line, limits its application to production line where every tasks are grouped into workstations. Line balancing is a process that balances the tasks among various workstations that is based upon precedence relation. The concept of shared principle enhances its efficiency by reducing the number of workstations. When compared with the conventional assembly line, the U-shaped assembly line clearly stresses on the balancing problem by allocating the tasks in forward, backward, or in both directions with respect to the precedence relation. The efficiency revealed by SAA for the shared U-shaped assembly line has proved better when compared to existing lines. The Simulated Annealing Algorithm (SAA) heuristic approach is projected to solve the medium and large sized problems by suggesting two objectives concurrently (i) To reveal the optimal number of work stations and (ii) to find the unbalance time among workstations for a fixed cycle time. The proposed approach is elaborated with a model problem and its performance is scrutinized with a set of problems after comparing the results of SAA with model test problems available in the already published literature. The results of the experiments have revealed that the proposed SA-based algorithm outperforms with great effectiveness. The Future research scope and a comprehensive bibliography are also given.
