Double assembly line balancing methods for a manufacturer of digital rice cookers

Abstract

To efficiently solve the assembly line balancing problems in the production lines of a Japanese manufacturer of digital rice cookers, the research in this paper proposes three assembly line balancing algorithms extended from the well-known algorithms. These algorithms arrange the work elements into the workstations by using the original precedence constraints as well as the reversed precedence constraints. The final solution of each algorithm is the best solution between the solution from the original problem and the solution from the reversed problem.