| Article ID: | iaor199060 |
| Country: | United States |
| Volume: | 37 |
| Issue: | 6 |
| Start Page Number: | 916 |
| End Page Number: | 924 |
| Publication Date: | Nov 1989 |
| Journal: | Operations Research |
| Authors: | Hackman Steven T., Magazine Michael J., Wee T.S. |
| Keywords: | scheduling, production |
A simple, fast and effective heuristic for the Simple Assembly Line Balancing Type I problem (minimizing the number of workstations) is proposed. A fast and effective branch-and-bound algorithm, which incorporates this heuristic for use in bounding, is developed. The algorithm introduces heuristic fathoming as a technique for reducing the size of the branch-and-bound tree. Methods to solve the Simple Assembly Line Balancing Type II problem (maximizing the production rate) are also described. Upper bounds on all heuristics for both problems are provided.