A new heuristic method for mixed model assembly line balancing problem

The goal chasing method is a popular algorithm in JIT system for the mixed model assembly line balancing problem. It is simple and easy to implement, but it is a very greedy algorithm and uses up 'good' parts in the early sequence so that the whole performance of the solution is influenced. In this paper, we provide the definition of good parts and good remaining sequence and analyze their relationship with the optimal solution's objective function value. We develop a new heuristic algorithm called 'variance algorithm' the numerical experiments show that the new algorithm can yield better solution with little more computation overhead. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.