Multi-criteria Assembly Line Design under Demand Uncertainty

Assembly line design methodologies have been extensively researched during the past decades. Various definitions of problems have been established together with different approaches as to the way they are solved. However, in the automotive industry, most companies still use simple tools and methods for the solution of these problems. There can be spreadsheet applications and simulation tools that do not provide actual decision support, and are limited to assisting engineers in distributing the processes to different work centres. Furthermore, most approaches take into account only a few goals and constraints, by providing either non-realistic solutions or no decision support to production engineers, beyond the distribution of processes. This paper proposes an assembly design algorithm that considers both time and cost parameters for the generation of different line alternatives; the algorithm, taking into account industrial requirements, considers multiple products of several demand profiles in the same line in order to provide support for multi-variant or multi-product systems. Finally, a series of possible alternative configurations of processes are taken into consideration so as to integrate the balancing of the line with process design and equipment specification.