A new heuristic method based on CPM in SALBP

The task of balancing of assembly lines is well-known in mass production system but this problem is NP-hard even for the simple straight line. Therefore, utilizing heuristic methods for these problems is totally unquestionable. Furthermore, in line with balancing problems, heuristic methods are the foundation of the metaheuristic methods, thus it seems to be necessary to use more efficient heuristic methods. This paper presents a new heuristic method based on the famous critical path method (CPM) for the simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP) that the only precedence constraints between tasks and cycle time have been considered. In this research regarding the objectives of minimizing the number of workstation, maximizing smoothness index and maximizing line performance, the efficiency of the suggested method and 11 popular methods are compared at SALBP-1. For comparative evaluation, 11 networks are collected from open literature, and are used with different cycle times. On the whole, 40 problems have been solved and it is found that the heuristic method based on critical path is more efficient than the others.