Article ID: | iaor20081864 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 1051 |
End Page Number: | 1060 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2007 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Renaud Jacques, Ruiz Angel, Carle Marc-Andr |
Keywords: | design, heuristics |
In the wooden flooring manufacturing industry, floor quality is directly related to the positioning of the wooden slats. This process is labor intensive and, due to short decision times, even experienced employees can make bad decisions, which makes it hard to achieve high-quality standards. In this paper, we propose fast and efficient methods for use with an automatic assembly device. These assembly methods were evaluated on real-life data via computer simulation. Compared to the manual assembly process, which results in floors with 5% of defective joints, our automatic assembly methods resulted in almost perfect floors.