A new type of problem to stabilize an assembly setup

Traditional assembly lines are still attractive means of mass and large-scale series production. Previous research works mainly dealt with the minimization of balancing loss, subject to precedence constraints. Very recently the focus of attention shifted towards system loss. However, these losses are not the proper indicators of the stability of the system since the efficiency of the assembly line increases normally when the stability of the system increases. In this paper, we introduce a new type of assembly line, which is totally different form the existing types of assembly line studied in the literature. In this work, we define the stability of the system in terms of reliability of the assembly line. The objective is to design an assembly line with a desired level of working stability measured through this reliability measure. This special type of assembly line, where production rate can be increased by minimizing the cycle time subject to a given level of reliability and precedence constraints, extends the decision-making framework available in the literature on assembly line balancing problem and indirectly takes care of both balancing loss and system loss.