Line balancing optimization under robot location and worker-station assignment considerations: A case study of a dishwasher factory

The focus of this article is on the line balancing work planned on the assembly line of a Dishwasher Factory. The main motivation is to make the assembly line more stable by grouping similar jobs and to increase the number of dishwashers produced per shift. In addition to these basic objectives, this study aims to rearrange the number of operators, optimize work-stock area and balance the man power at the stations. We propose a novel integer programming model that takes into account the location selection of stations, elevators and robots and the decisions of assigning jobs and workers to stations and use a commercial solver to solve the problem exactly. In the light of the outputs obtained from the solution of the problem, the current system and the improved system results were compared. First, the increase of dishwasher production capacity under current operational guidelines was evaluated and then the effect of grouping jobs on cycle time was evaluated. Based on the results of the sensitivity analysis, different results were proposed to optimize the current tempo, cycle time and number of workers. The results indicate that the number of workers can be reduced by 36%, while the number of dishwashers produced per shift can be increased by up to 52%, when all other inputs of the problem are fixed. Compared to the current practice, in the solution proposed to the manufacturing firm, the number of stations opened with similar jobs grouped was reduced by 68%, the number of fields that could be used by the stations was kept the same, the number of workers was reduced by 10% and the cycle time was improved by 4.34 seconds and the number of machines produced per shift increased by 43%.