The operating behaviour of unbalanced, unpaced merging assembly lines

Unbalanced assembly line research has grown in importance because of its increasing applications in emerging economies, reverse logistics and remanufacturing. This paper examines the performance of numerous simulated patterns for reliable unbalanced manual merging assembly lines. The contribution of this study to the literature is that imbalance does not always negatively impact efficiency and that it can improve merging line performance when compared to a corresponding balanced merging line. The best performance was found to be a balanced line configuration and a monotone decreasing order for both parallel merging lines, with the former generally resulting in a lower throughput and the latter resulting in a lower average buffer level than that of a balanced line.

Automated summary

Research on unbalanced assembly lines has become increasingly important due to its applications in emerging economies, reverse logistics, and remanufacturing. This study found that imbalance does not necessarily lead to lower efficiency and can even improve performance compared to balanced lines in certain cases. The best performance was observed in a balanced line configuration and a monotone decreasing order for parallel merging lines, with the former resulting in lower throughput and the latter leading to lower average buffer levels.