Assembly Line Balancing, proposal of a new methodology: Integrated Balancing Method

In industrial plants, line balancing problems do not often find an objective solution and production managers often allocate tasks to operators without following a real methodology, but basing themselves on personal experience; therefore, there are many problems when quick changes of capacity or constraints occur.rnThe starting point of this study is the investigation of the main methods of balancing, understanding their advantages and disadvantages in assigning homogenously tasks to workers. We propose a new technique of balancing, in particular for assembly lines, simple, general and effective, able to solve the ambiguity in balancing.rnThanks to the proposed research, an integration and a progress of classic methodologies has been realized. The method proposed, called IBM Integrated Balancing Method, has been applied to a real case study (the assembly line of a multinational company), in order to show its capacity of supporting production managers in designing and optimizing assembly lines (ALBPs).