An algorithm of shortening idle time for a kind of special assembly problem

According to actual assembly conditions, an improved assembly algorithm is presented for a kind of special problem which the operations can be separated into the dependent operations that have the only immediate predecessor and immediate successor and the independent ones. The independent operations are no predecessor and successor. According to the characteristics of the independent operations, the algorithm assembles them by size and assembles idle times by size. This algorithm compares the two sequences and lengthens the idle time if the idle time doesn’t fit the independent operation, then inserts the independent operation to the corresponding idle time. This algorithm can reduce the total idle time of the machines and let the total assembly time be less than the total assembly time of the operations on the critical path. Experiments show that this algorithm not only has better complexity but also can shorten the total assembly time. Because the assembly operation tree can be decomposed the sub trees by recursion, this algorithm can be applied to common assembly problems by recursion and can shorten the total assembly time for common jobs.