Cyclic scheduling of flexible mixed model assembly lines

Abstract

Mixed model assembly lines are used to produce multiple copies of given minimum part set (MPS). Considering only one copy (cycle) of the MPS while solving the mixed-model balancing and scheduling problem yields suboptimal solutions since blocking and idle times of stations between repeated copies are ignored. Modeling and solving this problem in a cyclic manner can significantly overcome these inefficiencies and improve the throughput of the line. In this paper, after investigating the nature of the problem, we propose exact and heuristic methods for practical applications and evaluate their performances on various size test instances. © IFAC.