Solving Assembly Line Balancing Problems with Emphasis on Cost Calculations: A Petrinets Based Approach

In this paper, a new heuristic approach based on Petri net is provided for assembly line balancing problem (ALBP). Unlike the other works that assume homogenous workstations (that the workstations are identical), this paper assumes that workstations need not be homogenous (e.g. Their running costs can be different), and attempts to optimize on the total cost of production too, in addition to maximizing workstation line time. The new approach makes use of Activity-Oriented Petri net (AOPN) with which resources (and hence - workstations) can be abstracted away from the Petri net model, thereby drastically reducing the complexity and size of Petri net models. AOPN also allows embedding costs to workstations so that the total costs of production can be calculated. This paper also presents an application example showing how the approach can be put into practice.