Production line balancing in the pharmaceutical industry using Goal Programming

Introduction- In a production Line it's important that the stations' cycle times are balanced and that they are low since this allows to reduce the work in process. However, doing this leads to an increase in the stations' number, that is not favorable because it raises the costs associated with the stations, therefore it is necessary to define strategies that allow achieving a balance between these requirements. Objective- In this article we propose the formulation of a model for the line balancing, using the technique of multi-objective goal programming, applied to the pharmaceutical industry in order to minimize the stations' number, minimize cycle time and inventory in process. Methodology- Goal programming is used to address a line balance model, which considers at the same time the assignment of multiple stations to one operation and the assignment of multiple operations to one station. Results- A significant decrease in cycle time and idle time at minimum costs is achieved, and a comparison between the deterministic and stochastic models is presented. Conclusions- Through this implementation of the LINGO model, the compliance of the proposed restrictions, the precedence of operations and the proper functioning of the model were validated through the optimal solutions obtained. The simulation is a tool that illustrates the complexity of the operations of the production system, which require, as in our case, a more realistic modeling to understand the behavior of the process and evaluate different