Decision Support Systems for Assembly Line Planning: modular Subsystems for a largescale Production Management System,” Decis

ii In the domain of assembly lines, process sheets are entities that carry assembly process descriptions (work instructions), assembly time estimations, product workspaces and other configuration management and control information. These process sheets get assigned to workstations during the process of assembly line balancing. In this research two tools have been developed to aid in the assembly line planning process. In order to ensure that assembly line workers do not intrude upon each other’s workspace, two assembly processes operating on the same product workspace must not be assigned to the same station. Generating and maintaining product workspace information for every process sheet is automated by use of the Product Workspace Identification Tool developed in this research. This tool uses CAD data, custom built analysis software, and web-based databases to define, compute, and store product workspace information. All assembly work instructions must have time studies. These time studies ar