Multi-criteria decision making for assembly line balancing

Assembly line balancing often has significant impact on performance of manufacturing systems, and is usually a multiple-objective problem. Neither an algorithmic nor a procedural assembly line balancing methodology is usually effective in solving these problems. This article proposes a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to solve an assembly line balancing problem. A computer-aided assembly line balancing tool as Flexible Line Balancing software is used to generate a considerable number of solutions alternatives as well as to generate quantitative decision-making unit outputs. The quantitative performance measures were considered in this article. Then DEA was used to solve the multiple-objective assembly line balancing problem. An illustrative example shows the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.