An Approach to Transfer Line Balancing Via a Special Set Partitioning Problem

International audienceThis paper deals with a transfer line balancing problem. It is a generalization of the well-known assembly line balancing problem. In transfer line balancing the operations to be executed are partitioned into blocks. The operations of each blocks are carried out simultaneously by a single piece of equipment. The blocks assigned to a workstation are executed in series. The aim is to design the line having the minimal weighted sum of workstation and block numbers while the precedence and cycle time constraints are respected as well as additional constraints. The approach proposed in this paper is based on the reduction of the considered balancing problem to a special set partitioning problem