A strong cutting plane algorithm for the robotic assembly line balancing problem

The authors consider the problem of assigning assembly tasks, parts and tools on a serial robotic assembly line so that the total number of robot cells required is minimized while satisfying the various constraints. In this problem, they need to consider the limited space to store the parts and the tool capacity of the robot hand in addition to the precedence restriction between tasks and cycle time requirements usually found in the simple assembly line balancing problem. The authors give an integer programming formulation of this problem and a strong cutting plane algorithm to solve it. Computational experiences on some real world problems and randomly generated problems are reported.