Integrating inspection-policy design in assembly-line balancing

This paper addresses the problem of assembly-line balancing and selection of the best inspection policy. Different inspection policies yield different manufacturing, reworking, inspection, and external failure costs. While, in the literature, assembly-line balancing and inspection-policy design have usually been addressed as different problems, they are strongly interrelated. Inspection tests require time to be carried out, and thus their assignation directly influences the results of the assembly-line balancing procedure, that is the number of stations that are necessary and hence the line installation cost. Thus, the advantages of integrating inspection policy design in assembly-line balancing are clear, but to our knowledge no such model is available yet. In this paper, a new model that simultaneously defines inspection policy and assembly-line balancing is presented.