A Comparison of Algorithms for Assembly Line Balancing: a Case Study of Kitchenware Packing Line

Abstract

Line balancing is very important mission for manufacturing industries because they can reduce the wastage from waiting and increase production line efficiency. Balancing the production line by different methods will give different results or different line efficiency. The objective of this research is to increase kitchenware packing line efficiency by comparing line efficiency results from Branch and bound method which is exact algorithm with Comsoal method which is heuristic algorithm. The research methodology starts with studying on tasks relationships or precedence diagrams, develop the Branch and bound algorithm which is exact algorithm in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and solve by using OpenSolver after that develop assembly line balancing mathematical model based on simple assembly line balancing problem type E which aims to reduce both of the number of work station and cycle time. Finally, Balancing the packing line by Comsoal method which is an assembly line balancing method using computer. The current packing line of case study has 69.63% of production line efficiency. From the computational results, it can be shown that the results using Branch and bound algorithm gave more line efficiency of the results than Comsoal method 3.70% and more than current line efficiency 25.16% by consuming 1 hours and 54 minutes for solving the results while Comsoal method consumed 3 seconds for solving the results therefore the suggestion for balancing the packing line in this company is balancing packing line by using exact algorithm for getting more line efficiency.