Purpose

Parallel two-sided assembly lines are usually designed to produce large-sized products such as trucks and buses. In parallel two-sided assembly lines, both left and right sides of the line are used for manufacturing one or more products on two or more assembly lines located parallel to each other. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new mathematical model for the parallel two-sided assembly line balancing problem that helps to evaluate and validate the balancing operations of the machines such as removal of tools and fixtures and reallocating the operators.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed approach is explained with the help of an example problem. In all, 22 test problems are formed using the benchmark problems P9, P12, P16 and P24. The results obtained are compared among approaches of the task(s) shared, tool(s) shared and both tool(s) and task(s) shared for effect on efficiency as the performance measure. The solution presented here follows the exact solution procedure that is solved by Lingo 16 solver.

Findings

Based on the experiments, line efficiency decreases when only tools are shared and increases when only tasks are shared. Results indicate that by sharing tasks and tools together, better line efficiency is obtained with less cost of tools and fixtures.

Practical implications

According to the industrial aspect, the result of the study can be beneficial for assembly of the products, where tools and tasks are shared between parallel workstations of two or more parallel lines.

Originality/value

According to the author’s best knowledge, this paper is the first to address the tools and tasks sharing between any pair of parallel workstations.

中文翻译：

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带有工具和任务共享的并行两侧装配线平衡

目的

平行的双面流水线通常设计用于生产大型产品，例如卡车和公共汽车。在平行的双面装配线中，生产线的左侧和右侧均用于在彼此平行的两条或多条装配线上制造一种或多种产品。本文的目的是为并行的两面流水线平衡问题开发一个新的数学模型，该模型有助于评估和验证机器的平衡操作，例如拆卸工具和固定装置以及重新分配操作员。

设计/方法/方法

借助示例问题对提出的方法进行了说明。总共使用基准问题P9，P12，P16和P24形成了22个测试问题。将所获得的结果在共享任务的方法，共享工具的方法以及共享工具和任务的方法之间进行比较，以影响作为绩效指标的效率。此处提供的解决方案遵循由Lingo 16求解器解决的确切解决方案过程。

发现

根据实验，仅共享工具时，生产线效率降低；仅共享任务时，生产线效率提高。结果表明，通过一起共享任务和工具，可以以更少的工具和固定装置成本获得更好的生产线效率。

实际影响

根据工业方面，研究结果可能有益于产品组装，因为在两条或更多条平行生产线的平行工作站之间共享工具和任务。

创意/价值

根据作者的最佳知识，本文是第一个讨论任何一对并行工作站之间共享工具和任务的文章。