Production Planning of Mixed-Model Assembly Lines: Overview and Extensions

Mixed-model assembly lines are of great practical relevance and are widelyused in a range of industries, such as the final assembly of the automotive andelectronics industries. Prior research mainly selected and discussed isolatedproblems rather than considering the whole planning process. In this articlemixed-model production planning is decomposed into five steps: initial configurationof the line, master scheduling, reconfiguration planning, sequencingand resequencing. The paper reviews and discusses all relevant planningsteps and proposes general planning instruments as well as formalized decisionmodels for those steps, which have not been thoroughly investigated inthe literature thus far...