Balancing of mixed-model two-sided assembly lines

This paper presents a new mathematical model and a simulated annealing algorithm for the mixed-model two-sided assembly line balancing problem. The proposed mathematical model minimizes the number of mated-stations (i.e., the line length) as the primary objective and minimizes the number of stations (i.e., the number of operators) as a secondary objective for a given cycle time. In the proposed simulated annealing algorithm, two performance criteria are considered simultaneously: maximizing the weighted line efficiency and minimizing the weighted smoothness index. The proposed approach is illustrated with an example problem, and its performance is tested on a set of test problems. The experimental results show that the proposed approach performs well. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.