Browsing by Subject "Assembly machines"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Ant colony optimization for the single model U-type assembly line balancing problem
(Elsevier, 2009) Sabuncuoglu, I.; Erel, E.; Alp, A.
An assembly line is a production line in which units move continuously through a sequence of stations. The assembly line balancing problem is defined as the allocation of tasks to an ordered sequence of stations subject to precedence constraints with the objective of optimizing a performance measure. In this paper, we propose ant colony algorithms to solve the single-model U-type assembly line balancing problem. We conduct an extensive experimental study in which the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared against best known algorithms reported in the literature. The results indicate that the proposed algorithms display very competitive performance against them. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Assembly line balancing using genetic algorithms
(Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) Sabuncuoğlu İ.; Erel, E.; Tanyer, M.
Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) is one of the important problems of production/operations management area. As small improvements in the performance of the system can lead to significant monetary consequences, it is of utmost importance to develop practical solution procedures that yield high-quality design decisions with minimal computational requirements. Due to the NP-hard nature of the ALB problem, heuristics are generally used to solve real life problems. In this paper, we propose an efficient heuristic to solve the deterministic and single-model ALB problem. The proposed heuristic is a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with a special chromosome structure that is partitioned dynamically through the evolution process. Elitism is also implemented in the model by using some concepts of Simulated Annealing (SA). In this context, the proposed approach can be viewed as a unified framework which combines several new concepts of AI in the algorithmic design. Our computational experiments with the proposed algorithm indicate that it outperforms the existing heuristics on several test problems.
Open Access
Design of a fully automated robotic spot-welding line
(Science and Technology Publications, 2011) Aktürk, M. Selim; Tula, Adnan; Gültekin, H.
The mixed model assembly line design problem includes allocating operations to the stations in the robotic cell and satisfying the demand and cycle time within a desired interval for each model to be produced. We also ensure that assignability, precedence and tool life constraints are met. Each pair of spot welding tools can process a certain number of welds and must be replaced at the end of tool life. Tool replacement decisions not only affect the tooling cost, but also the production rate. Therefore, we determine the number of stations and allocate the operations into the stations in such a way that tool change periods coincide with the unavailability periods to eliminate tool change related line stoppages in a mixed model fully automated robotic assembly line. We provide a mathematical formulation of the problem, and propose a heuristic algorithm.