Multi-manned assembly line balancing problem with dependent task times: a heuristic based on solving a partition problem with constraints

This paper aims to study a variant of the multi-manned assembly line balancing problem (MALBP), which considers the possibility of multiple workers simultaneously performing different tasks at the same workstation. In most cases it is assumed that task times are deterministic. This paper takes into account possible interferences between workers and deals with the MALBP with task times depending on the number of workers at the station. Different procedures are developed: resolutions on the basis of a mathematical model, two Relax-and-Fix procedures, a heuristic based on solving a partition problem with constraints (named "HEUR_PART") and a set of other variants of the HEUR_PART procedure. The computational experiments indicate that HEUR_PART and the HEUR_PART_SGL variant are the proposals that perform best. Additionally, we show that they obtain better results than the ones published in the literature. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.