Simulated annealing algorithm for balancing assembly lines with stochastic task times

Assembly line balancing is known as the problem of assigning the tasks of thetotal work to the workstations such that the precedence relations among thetasks are satisfied and some performance measure is optimized. İn practice, tasktimes are not constant or deterministic. Task times variability comes intopicture when tasks are performed manually at the workstations. But inassembly lines with stochastic task times, balancing procedure is more complexdue to the probability of incompleteness of stations times in a given cycle time.The recent researchs show that modern heuristics give good solutions to thesetype of problems. In this study, the first one is single and the other one is multi -objective, two simulated annealing algorithms are developed for stochastic,single model assembly lines. Proposed algorithms allows parallel stations. Undermulti-objective algorithm, three different approaches (equal weighting, randomweighting and multinomial) are proposed and the performances of theseapproaches researched experimentally.Science Code : 906.1.141Key Words : Stochastic Assembly Line, Parallel Lines, Simulated AnnealingPage Number: 93Adviser : Prof.Dr. Berna DENGİZ