TSALBP: Time and Space constrained Assembly Line Balancing Problems
NTIGen: a Software for Generating Nissan Based Instances for Time and Space Assembly Line Balancing
Authors
Manuel Chica2, Óscar Cordón2, Sergio Damas2 and Joaquín Bautista1
2 European Centre for Soft Computing
Abstract
The time and space assembly line balancing problem (TSALBP) is a
realistic multiobjective version of assembly line balancing industrial problems
involving the joint optimization of conflicting criteria such as the cyc1e time, the
number of stations, and the area of these stations. For this family of problems
there is not any repository where researchers and practitioners can obtain realistic
problem instances also containing information on mixed products plans. In
this contribution we introduce a new TSALBP instance software generator that
can produce problem instances having industrial real-like features. This generator
is called NTIGen (Nissan TSALBP Instance GENerator) since it is developed
from the information and real data of the assembly line and production planning
ofthe Nissan plant of Barcelona. The NTIGen software as well as some benchmark
instances are publicly available on Internet and could be used by researchers
to carry out general TSALBP experiments and to also discriminate between
different assembly line configurations when future demand conditions vary.
Key words: Time and Space Assembly Line Balancing, Problem Instance Generator, Mixed Products, Nissan, Optimization