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The assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem with stochastic worker availability

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  • Marcus Ritt
  • Alysson M. Costa
  • Cristóbal Miralles

Abstract

Assembly lines can be employed successfully in sheltered work centres to better include persons with disabilities in the labour market as well as to improve production efficiency. The optimal assignment of a heterogeneous workforce is known as the assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem (ALWABP). These assembly lines are characterised not only by a heterogeneous workforce, but also by high levels of absenteeism, which makes it more difficult to obtain stable and efficient line balancing solutions. In this paper, an extension of the ALWABP to minimise the expected cycle time under uncertain worker availability is proposed. We model this problem as a two-stage mixed integer program, and propose local search heuristics for solving it. Computational experiments show that stochastic modelling can help to improve the line’s efficiency and that the proposed heuristics produce good results for instances of practical size.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcus Ritt & Alysson M. Costa & Cristóbal Miralles, 2016. "The assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem with stochastic worker availability," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(3), pages 907-922, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:54:y:2016:i:3:p:907-922
    DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2015.1108534
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    Cited by:

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    3. Dolgui, Alexandre & Kovalev, Sergey & Kovalyov, Mikhail Y. & Malyutin, Sergey & Soukhal, Ameur, 2018. "Optimal workforce assignment to operations of a paced assembly line," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 264(1), pages 200-211.
    4. Battaïa, Olga & Dolgui, Alexandre, 2022. "Hybridizations in line balancing problems: A comprehensive review on new trends and formulations," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).

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