Description

A production and/or assembly line is an ordered set of work stations in which each unit of product to be manufactured/assembled passes successively, in an established order, through said stations. The product units may be identical or not, but for each type of unit the set of operations to be executed at each station is preset. Production and/or assembly lines are very frequent production systems in companies; In this way, its design (how many lines and how many stations and of what type make up each line) and/or balanced (assignment of tasks on a given line) is very important to determine their competitiveness.

Historically, the problem has been treated from an academic point of view without considering, due to the great difficulty they incorporate, some restrictions, characteristics and conditions that present themselves in reality. The work carried out in this line of research consists in including characteristics of reality not contemplated in its treatment: multiline systems; alternative assembly routes; different seasons; existence of preparation times; hierarchical minimization of station load; new measure of regularity in unit sequencing; graphs with OR precedents; bulky products; operations with deterioration of their time; and existence of tasks that, in the same station with several operators / robots, cannot be executed simultaneously, among others.