Packing items to feed assembly lines

We treat a practical application of packing problems in feeding assembly lines. This study was motivated by a real situation encountered in the shop floor of a major automobile industry plant in Brazil. The assembly line feed problem (LFP) consists in how pack the items in the available containers t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of operational research 2008-01, Vol.184 (2), p.480-489
Main Authors: de Souza, Mauricio C., de Carvalho, Carlos R.V., Brizon, Wellington B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assembly lines
Automobile industry
GRASP
Heuristic
Integer programming
Metaheuristics
Packing
Packing problem
Shop floor logistics
Studies
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Summary:We treat a practical application of packing problems in feeding assembly lines. This study was motivated by a real situation encountered in the shop floor of a major automobile industry plant in Brazil. The assembly line feed problem (LFP) consists in how pack the items in the available containers to meet the line work centers’ requirements with a minimum total cost over the planning horizon. LFP is a variable-sized bin packing problem that has two special features: (i) a cardinality constraint on each bin’s size; and, (ii) a cost structure such that each bin’s cost varies according to the items that are packed in it. We propose an integer programming model and a GRASP heuristic for LFP. Numerical results on real-life test instances are reported.
ISSN:0377-2217
1872-6860
DOI:10.1016/j.ejor.2006.09.091