Analysis of Bowl Effects on Stochastic Assembly Line

In this study, variation of the task times, and precedence relation effects are investigated to evaluate the line performance. A new solution procedure based on queueing networks and constraint programming is proposed to model and solve the Assembly Line Balancing Problem (ALBP). Station utilization, total average number of jobs and smoothness index are used as performance measures. Bowl effect, inverted bowl effect and variability imbalance which are seen in balanced lines are examined by using proposed procedure. Also effects of the variability on the line performance are reviewed. Literature data sets are utilized to assess the effectiveness of the procedure.