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.