Integrating assembly planning and line balancing

Abstract EN

Traditionally, assembly planning and assembly line balancing are considered as two independent tasks.

Assembly planning represents a fundamental step in the operation of a manufacturing system that involves product assembly while line balancing represents one of the biggest technical problems in designing and operating a manual assembly line.

Although there have been several reported researches on assembly planning for mechanical products, there is no available research on integration of assembly planning and assembly line balancing.

In this paper, a methodology called COMSOAL-PLB (Computer Method of Sequencing Operations for Assembly Lines of Assembly Planning and Line Balancing) was developed to incorporate making decisions on process planning and production planning for assembly product.

Using ASIA-PLB, a planner or manufacturing engineer can determine optimum or near optimum assembly sequence (s), optimum allocation the task sets that will maximize the efficiency.

The system has been tested on product (x) in Seven Nissan Company.

It resulted in reduction of idle time about 32 %.