Multi-manned Assembly Line Balancing Problem with Skilled Workers: A New Mathematical Formulation

Multi-manned assembly lines are usually found in plants producing large-sized high-volume products such as automotive sector. In this paper, the balancing problem of this kind of assembly lines with skilled workers is addressed. A new mixed integer programming formulation is presented to solve this problem optimally with the objective of minimizing the total operating cost of the assembly line. The main advantage of the proposed model is to allow the workers in each multi-manned workstation to perform the different assembly tasks of same product simultaneously. The proposed formulation has been used to solve some experimental problems found in the literature. The comparison between the results obtained with the proposed model and those obtained with the model proposed by Moon, Logendran, and Lee (2009) shows that the proposed model can improve the operating cost of the system by reducing the number of workers and workstations.