Assembly line balancing problem with ergonomics: a new fatigue and recovery model

Assembly lines are production lines used to manufacture products, ranging from mass-production products to mass-customisation with low unit products. Assembly lines consume the largest parts of investment funds and involve the largest proportion of companies' labour force. However, workers in assembly lines are exposed to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and ergonomics problems. Poor distribution of workloads reduces the performance of assembly lines and causes workers MSDs and injuries, largely affecting the economics of production systems and resulting in high workers' compensation and absenteeism costs. Furthermore, ergonomics problems and MSDs impact product quality and decrease productivity. We propose a methodology for taking physical ergonomics into account as early as in the design phase of assembly lines. This methodology is based on Integer Linear Programming for the assembly line balancing problem with consideration of ergonomics with a quantitative fatigue and recovery criterion. As solving approach, we develop a dedicated exact algorithm, denoted Iterative Dichotomic Search, to solve low and medium-size instances of the problem. We validate our approach by proposing numerical experiments and analysis on instances from the literature.