Journal
COMPUTERS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH
Volume 118, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.cor.2020.104905
Keywords
U-shaped assembly line; Worker assignment; Ergonomic risks; Multi-objectives
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [51875421, 51875420]
- Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, under the project OPTEP-Port Terminal Operations Optimization [RTI2018-094940-B-I00]
- FEDER funds
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Workers still perform the bulk of operations in the manufacturing industry. The consideration of the assignment of workers and the reduction of ergonomic risks in U-shaped assembly lines is of paramount importance. However, the objectives of efficient task and worker assignment and a reduction in ergonomic risks are not usually correlated. Moreover, there is limited research in the existing literature into multi-objective approaches in U-shaped assembly lines. We formulate a U-shaped assembly worker assignment and balancing problem to simultaneously minimize cycle times and ergonomic risks. In addition, and due to its simplicity and successful results in flow shop scheduling problems, a Restarted Iterated Pareto Greedy algorithm is designed to optimize both objectives. In this algorithm, a problem-specific heuristic-based initialization is extended to improve the initial solution. Two precedence-based greedy and local search phases are developed to exploit the space around the current solution. Finally, a restart mechanism is proposed to help the algorithm escape from local optima. Comprehensive computational results, supported by detailed statistical analyses, suggest that the proposed multi-objective algorithm outperforms existing methods on a large number of benchmark instances. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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