SOLVING THE MULTI-MANNED ASSEMBLY LINE BALANCING PROBLEM WITH DEPENDENT TASK TIMES BY MEANS OF EMPIRICALLY ADJUSTED GREEDY HEURISTICS (EAGH)

ABSTRACT: Multi-manned assembly lines are widely used in manufacturing industries that process a high-volume of large-sized workpieces. At each workstation there multiple workers simultaneously performing different tasks with the possibility interfering other, leading to an increase processing task times. This paper studies this type problem: multi-manned line balancing problem dependent times (MALBP-DTT). As discussed recent literature, HEUR_PART procedure presents best behaviour for solving MALBP-DTT. In paper, is improved by using Empirically Adjusted Greedy Heuristics (EAGH) along new (named “EAGH-CKTL”) presented and based on EAGH combined cocktail heuristics concept. EAGH-CKTL design priority rules MALBP-DTT through steps. particular, applied building have good performance as part heuristics. The computational experiments show efficiency both designing efficient rules: one designed better than any other rule proposed literature HEUR_PART, while another evidences remarkable improvement results when added its original Keywords: combinatorial optimisation; balancing; workstations; times; EAGH;