The sequence-dependent assembly line balancing problem

Assembly line balancing problems (ALBP) arise whenever an assembly line is configured, redesigned or adjusted. An ALBP consists of distributing the total workload for manufacturing any unit of the products to be assembled among the work stations along the line. The sequence-dependent assembly line balancing problem (SDALBP) is an extension of the standard simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP) which has significant relevance in real-world assembly line settings. SDALBP extends the basic problem by considering sequence-dependent task times. In this paper, we define this new problem, formulate several versions of a mixed-integer program, adapt solution approaches for SALBP to SDALBP, generate test data and perform some preliminary computational experiments. As a main result, we find that applying SALBP-based search procedures is very effective, whereas modelling and solving the problem with MIP standard software is not recommendable.