Assembly Line Balancing

Line balancing is the assignment activity of sequential work activities into work
stations in order to gain high utilization of labor and equipment and therefore
minimize the idle time.

Compatible work activities are combines into approximately equal time groupings that
do not violate precedence relationships.

There are two types of Priority rules for allocating tasks to workstations. They are,
• Longest work element time rule
• Maximum following tasks rule
 Assembly Line Balancing
Longest work element time rule
Steps to be followed :
1. Identify the work (jobs/work).
2. Breakdown the work into elemental tasks or steps.
3. List the various elements along with their precedence relationship or logical relationships and the time
required.
4. Sketch the precedence diagram.
5. Consider the highest time element in the table. This time will become cycle time (CT).
6. Add up all the elemental times and find the total time (T).
7. Divide the total time by cycle time to get the number of work stations required.
8. Assign task to stations or group the elements, so that each group is considered as a station.

Here, we must take care to see that the precedence relationship is not violated.
Also, total time of all the elements in a group does not exceed cycle time.
 Assembly Line Balancing
Example 1 : There are nine elements in completing a job. The precedence relationship and time
required to complete each element is given in the table. Draw LOB.

Steps or Immediate Duration of the

elemental tasks predecessor elements in min.
1 -- 3
2 -- 4
3 1 2
4 2 5
5 3 4
6 5 8
7 4 2
8 6 4
9 8 6
Total: 38min.
 Assembly Line Balancing
Example 2 : A company is setting up an assembly line to produce 192 units per 8 hour shift.
The following table identifies the work elements, time and immediate predecessors.
Steps or elemental Immediate Duration of the
tasks predecessor elements in min.
A -- 40
B A 80 2. What is the
C D,E,F 30 theoretical
1. What is minimum number
the desired D B 25 of stations?
cycle time? E B 20
F B 15
G A 120
H G 145
I H 130
J C,I 115
Total: 720

3. Use the longest work element time rule and balance the assembly line.
4. What are the resulting efficiency and delay percentages.?
 Assembly Line Balancing
Example 3 : The assembly of an electronic copier requires a total of 66minutes. Table below
gives the tasks, assembly time and sequence requirements for the copier.
Performance time Task must follow
Tasks
(min.) those listed below.
A 10 --
B 11 A
C 5 B
D 4 B
E 12 A
F 3 C,D
G 7 F
H 11 E
I 3 G,H
Total: 66
Draw the precedence diagram for the above requirement. If 480 productive minutes of work are
available per day and if production schedule requires that 40 units be completed as output from
the assembly line each day, the determine the cycle time and minimum number of work stations
required. Use the most following task heuristic to assign jobs to workstations.
 Assembly Line Balancing
 Defined as the assignment of work to stations of the assembly line so
as to achieve the desired output rate with the minimum number of
assembly stations.

 Line balancing may be performed when a line is set up initially, or to

rebalance the line to change its output rate or when product or process
changes.

Terminology associated with Assembly Line Balancing

 Cycle Time (c) – maximum time allowed for work on a unit at each
station.

Time Available
Cycle Time, c =
Desired output rate

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 Assembly Line Balancing - Terminology
 Theoretical minimum number of stations (N) – the minimum number
of stations that are required to achieve the desired output rate.

Time required to assemble one Complete unit of product

N=
Cycle Time
∑t
=
c

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 Assembly Line Balancing - Terminology
 Idle time - is the total unproductive time for all the stations in the
assembly of each unit.
Idle Time = n x c -∑ t

where, n – Actual number of stations

c – cycle time
∑t – time required to assemble one complete unit of product
∑t
 Efficiency of Assembly line = x 100
nxc
OR
Theoretical Minimum number of stations
= x100
Actual number of stations
 Balance Delay – is the amount by which the efficiency of the assembly
line falls short of 100%.
Balance Delay (%) = 100 - efficiency
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 Assembly Line Balancing - Terminology

 Precedence Diagram – is the sequential pictorial representation of all

the activities that are required to assemble one complete unit of
product.

• It shows which tasks have to be done first, which task must succeed,
which tasks can be performed simultaneously, etc.

• It is in the form of a network, wherein the tasks are denoted by circles,

with the time required to perform the task shown below each circle.

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 Assembly Line Balancing - Steps

Steps of Assembly Line Balancing

1. Define the task - Separate the work in to work elements or task, i.e. the
smallest units of the work that can be performed independently.
2. Determine the time standards for each work element or task.
3. Identify the precedence requirements and draw the network
4. Calculate the cycle time and the minimum no. of stations required
based on the desired output rate.
5. Apply an assignment heuristic to assign the tasks to each stations
satisfying the precedence relationships and cycle time.
6. Evaluate the line efficiency
7. Seek further improvement.

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 Assembly Line Balancing - Steps
Procedure or steps to assign tasks to various stations (step 5)
Step (1). Start with station k and make a list of eligible tasks that can be
assigned to it. Eligible task means
• it has not yet been assigned to this or any previous stations.
• all the predecessors have been assigned to this or previous stations.
• its time does not exceed the stations idle times which accounts for all
the tasks already assigned. If no eligible task is found go to step(4)
Step (2). Pick an eligible task - decision rules commonly used to select
eligible task.
• Longest work element rule. Pick task with longest time.
• Largest no. of follower rule. Assign the eligible task to station k
chosen. If two or more eligible tasks are tied, choose arbitrarily.

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 Assembly Line Balancing - Steps

Step (3). Calculate the cumulative time of all the tasks assigned so far to
station k, subtract this total from the cycle time to find the station’s idle
time. Go step (1) and generate the new list of eligible tasks.
Step (4). If some tasks are still unsigned, but none are eligible tasks for
station k, create a new station k+1 and go to step (1).

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