Assembly Line Balancing

Introduction to Industrial
Engineering

The Line Balancing Problem

The

problem is to arrange the individual

processing and assembly tasks at the
workstations so that the total time
required at each workstation is
approximately the same.
Nearly impossible to reach perfect
balance

Things to consider
Sequence

of tasks is restricted, there is

a required order
Called precedence constraints
There is a production rate needed, i.e.
how many products needed per time
period
Design the line to meet demand and
within constraints

Terminology and Definitions

Minimum

Work Element
Total Work Content
Workstation Process time
Cycle Time
Precedence Constraints
Balance Delay

Minimum Work Element

Dividing the job into tasks of a

rational and smallest size
Example: Drill a hole, cant be
divided
Symbol Time for element j: Tej
is a constant

Tej

Total Work Content

Aggregate of work
elements

Twc Tej
j 1

Workstation Process time

The

amount of time for an individual

workstation, after individual tasks have
been combined into stations
Sum of task times = sum of workstation
times

Cycle time
Time

between parts coming off the line

Ideally, the production rate, but may
need to be adjusted for efficiency and
down time
Established by the bottleneck station,
that is station with largest time

Precedence Constraints
Generally

given, determined by the

required order of operations
Draw in a network style for
understanding
Cannot violate these, an element must
be complete before the next one is
started

Balance Delay

Measure of line
inefficiency due to
imbalances in
station times

nTc Twc
d
nTc

Method Largest Candidate Rule

List

elements in descending order of T

Assign elements to first station, from top
to bottom of list, minding constraints, and
not causing sum to exceed cycle time
Continue assigning elements to stations
where each station < cycle time, largest
assigned first, until all assigned
EXAMPLE