Using Simulation and Data Envelopment Analysis to Compare Assembly Line Balancing Solutions

This paper presents a technique for comparing the results of different assembly line balancing strategies by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Initially, several heuristics--which can be thought of as assembly line balancing strategies--were used to solve seven line-balancing problems. The resulting line balance solutions provided two pieces of information that were of particular interest: the number of workers needed and the amount of equipment needed. These two items were considered inputs for DEA. The different line balance solutions were then used as layouts for simulated production runs. From the simulation experiments, several output performance measures were obtained which were of particular interest and were used as outputs for DEA. The analysis shows that DEA is effective in suggesting which line balancing heuristics are most promising.

[1]  Robert M. Thrall,et al.  Chapter 5 Duality, classification and slacks in DEA , 1996, Ann. Oper. Res..

[2]  Russell G. Thompson,et al.  Chapter 7 DEA multiplier analytic center sensitivity with an illustrative application to independent oil companies , 1996, Ann. Oper. Res..

[3]  A. Charnes,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis Theory, Methodology and Applications , 1995 .

[4]  Patrick R. McMullen,et al.  A heuristic for solving mixed-model line balancing problems with stochastic task durations and parallel stations , 1997 .

[5]  Peter Andrew Pinto Assembly line balancing with paralleling , 1975 .

[6]  G. M. Buxey,et al.  Assembly Line Balancing with Multiple Stations , 1974 .

[7]  Russell G. Thompson,et al.  The role of multiplier bounds in efficiency analysis with application to Kansas farming , 1990 .

[8]  Patrick R. McMullen,et al.  Using simulated annealing to solve a multiobjective assembly line balancing problem with parallel workstations , 1998 .

[9]  C. L. Moodie,et al.  A HEURISTIC METHOD OF ASSEMBLY LINE BALANCING FOR ASSUMPTIONS OF CONSTANTOR VARIABLE WORK ELEMENT TIMES , 1964 .

[10]  Richard A. Tapia,et al.  Chapter 6 On the construction of strong complementarity slackness solutions for DEA linear programming problems using a primal-dual interior-point method , 1996, Ann. Oper. Res..

[11]  A. Charnes,et al.  Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis , 1984 .

[12]  Russell G. Thompson,et al.  Sensitivity Analysis of Efficiency Measures with Applications to Kansas Farming and Illinois Coal Mining , 1994 .

[13]  A. L. Arcus,et al.  COMSOAL: a computer method of sequencing operations for assembly lines , 1965 .

[14]  Fred McLanahan Tonge,et al.  A heuristic program for assembly line balancing , 1961 .

[15]  William V. Gehrlein,et al.  A comparative evaluation of heuristic line balancing techniques , 1986 .

[16]  Basheer M. Khumawala,et al.  A branch and bound algorithm for assembly line balancing with paralleling , 1975 .

[17]  John E. Beasley,et al.  Restricting Weight Flexibility in Data Envelopment Analysis , 1990 .

[18]  Peter A. Pinto,et al.  Branch and bound and heuristic procedures for assembly line balancing with paralleling of stations , 1981 .

[19]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  Applied data envelopment analysis , 1991 .

[20]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  Weights restrictions and value judgements in Data Envelopment Analysis: Evolution, development and future directions , 1997, Ann. Oper. Res..

[21]  Liping Cheng,et al.  AN EFFECTIVE MIXED-MODEL ASSEMBLY LINE SEQUENCING HEURISTIC FOR JUST-IN-TIME PRODUCTION SYSTEMS , 1993 .

[22]  Ilker Baybars,et al.  A survey of exact algorithms for the simple assembly line balancing , 1986 .

[23]  Fred M. Tonge,et al.  Summary of a Heuristic Line Balancing Procedure , 1960 .

[24]  Rodney H. Green,et al.  Comparing products using data envelopment analysis , 1991 .

[25]  Fred M. Tonge Assembly Line Balancing Using Probabilistic Combinations of Heuristics , 1965 .