An important problem in manufacturing is the assembly line balancing problem. When setting up a manufacturing line, activities must be assigned to workstations. The maximum time spent at a workstation...

An important problem in manufacturing is the assembly line balancing problem. When setting up a manufacturing line, activities must be assigned to workstations. The maximum time spent at a workstation is called the cycle time. Minimizing the cycle time translates to maximizing the number of items that can be produced each hour.


Here is a typical assembly line balancing problem that can be solved with the Evolutionary Solver. Manufacture of a product consists of 10 activities (A–J) that require the times (in seconds) in the file P08_41.xlsx to complete. Certain activities must be completed before others. These precedence relations are also given in the file P08_41.xlsx. For example, activity A cannot be performed on a higher numbered workstation than activity B. Use Evolutionary Solver to determine an assignment of activities to workstations that minimizes the total cycle time.