Issue |
RAIRO-Oper. Res.
Volume 55, Number 1, January-February 2021
Decision and Optimization in Service, Control and Engineering (CoDIT2019-DOSCE)
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 99 - 113 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/ro/2020126 | |
Published online | 03 March 2021 |
The operating behaviour of unbalanced, unpaced merging assembly lines
1
Department of Supply Chain Management, Rennes School of Business, 2 Rue Robert d’Arbrissel, 35065 Rennes, France
2
Department of Strategy, La Rochelle School of Business, 102 Rue de Coureilles, 17024 La Rochelle, France
3
Department of Finance, Operations and Marketing, Brest Business School, 2 Avenue de Provence, 29200 Brest, France
4
Department of Human Resources and Management, La Rochelle School of Business, 102 Rue de Coureilles, 17024 La Rochelle, France
* Corresponding author: abdelkader.sbihi@brest-bs.com, abdelkader.sbihi@univ-paris1.fr
Received:
21
October
2019
Accepted:
2
November
2020
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.
Mathematics Subject Classification: 90B30 / 90B70
Key words: Merging lines / imbalance patterns / average buffer level / throughput / simulation
© EDP Sciences, ROADEF, SMAI 2021
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