Assembly line balancing and activity scheduling for customised products manufacturing

Abstract Nowadays, end customers require personalized products to match their specific needs. Thus, production systems must be extremely flexible. Companies typically exploit assembly lines manufacture produces in great volumes. The development of distinguished by mixed or multi models increases flexibility concerning the number product variants able manufactured. However, few scientific contributions deal with customizable products, i.e., which can designed and ordered requiring not a large set available accessories. This manuscript proposes an original two-step procedure multi-manned for customized manufacturing. first step groups accessories together clusters according similarity index. belonging cluster are requested necessitate significant mounting time. this aims split same different operators avoiding overloads. second consists innovative optimization model defines tasks accessory assignment operators. Furthermore, developed activity time schedule compliance task precedencies maximizing operator workload balance. An industrial case study is adopted test validate proposed procedure. obtained results suggest superior balancing such lines, average worker utilization rate greater than 90%. worst scenario terms customer requirement, just 4 line out 16 maximum cycle