Eureka: A Hybrid System for Assembly Line Balancing

Numerous methods have been proposed for solution of the simple assembly line balancing (SALB) problem. This paper describes a branch and bound algorithm which in many cases is faster than the well-known Hoffmann heuristic technique to which it is related. It introduces a simple bounding rule which uses the concept of the "theoretical" minimum slack time to achieve rapid solutions. It is combined with the Hoffmann heuristic to develop an even more effective system for solving SALB problems. Timing results are given for a standard set of problems found in the literature. Since that set was solved in such a very short time, more challenging as well as more typical problems are explored and timing results presented. Benchmarking of the procedure is easier since implementation is on an eight-megahertz IBM AT with a math coprocessor, using the standard IBM PC Professional FORTRAN compiler.