A Preference Order Dynamic Program for Stochastic Assembly Line Balancing

Consider an assembly line balancing problem with stochastic task times. Our objective is to find a grouping of tasks into stations that satisfies all precedence relations and minimizes the number of stations, subject to the constraint that the probability that the resulting station work content at each station is no more than the given cycle time is bounded by a given value. Similar to Held and Karp's approach, we formulate the problem in dynamic programming. The solution procedure is based on Mitten's preference order dynamic programming