Balancing mixed-model assembly lines using adjacent cross-training in a demand variation environment
This paper presents a contribution related to a straight-paced MAL with adjacent cross-training to meet the variation in production demand. With adjacent cross-training, tasks can be reallocated to adjacent stations where workers can deal with when demand changes. The assembly line can achieve quick response to the new demand without too many changes. For all the 450 instances, our algorithm can find the optimal solution for 388 instances in 100s, and the gaps between the obtained objective values and the lower bounds are 1.62 for the remaining 62 instances on average. In total, 83 out of the 388 instances use fewer stations with the adjacent cross-training policy than without the policy.
mixed-model assembly line cross-training demand variation branch bound and remember