Assembly Line Balancing Optimization Research Towards Discrete Manufacturing

Adam Smith’s theory of labor division and the consequent emergence of the Fordassembly line production method has been dominating the worldwide industrializationfor about100years.This production mode has contributed to the rapid growth of theworld economic and has also brought great changes in the market demand patterns,market dominance has been taken over from producers to customers. Companies noware no longer facing a problem as capacity faculty, but how to improve productionflexibility and shorten the production cycle and the flexibility to respond to changingmarket demands etc. Such changes in turn stimulated the production methods to seeka new breakthrough, that is exactly why multi-species and small-batch productionmode came into being. While maintaining the same efficiency as mass production, itcan effectively respond to the variety of the demands and the species. Currently, thereare two ways to realize this multi-species and small batch model: one is to adopt amixed assembly line, and another is the use of cell production.Based on the above problems, this paper discussed the characteristics of cellproduction, as well as its advanatage at dealing with the multi-species and small batchdemands model. Assembly line balancing problem is a sort of management issues thataccompanied by the emergence of assembly lines, and is expanded with the constantevolution of the assembly line. And under cell production mode, the assembly linebalancing problem also has a certain uniqueness. Based on these characteristics andprevious studies, this paper proposed a mathematical model combined with fuzzyoptimization theory to solve the line-balancing optimization problem, using lingo assolving tool. Another way to achieve assembly line balancing optimization is by usingIE methods to break the current balancing state so as to seek a better balance, itsmanifestations is through the analysis of the operation unit itself and the relationshipsbetween the operation units to find a more efficient way to achieve continuousimprovement. And in this paper it is also given a detailed theoretical description.About how to specificly use mathematical optimization model and industrialengineering techniques to achieve assembly line balancing under the mode of cellproduction, as well as achieve a constant improvement of the current balancing state,this paper gave a detailed proof for the arguments that put forward in this paper, withthe help of an urban rail transportation equipment manufacturing assembly plant.Ultimately, this paper not only proved the efficiency of the cell production’s responding to the multi-species and small batch production mode, but also proposedan effective way to achieve the assembly line balancing implementation and continualimprovement.