A comparative evaluation of assembly line balancing heuristics

A comparative evaluation is presented of six popular assembly line balancing heuristics, namely, ranked positional weight, Kilbridge and Wester, Moodie and Young, Hoffman precedence matrix, immediate update first fit, and rank and assign heuristic. The evaluation criteria used are the number of excess stations given, line efficiency, smoothness index and CPU time. The trade and transfer phase of the Moodie and Young method is applied to all heuristics, then the results are compared based on the evaluation criteria. Twenty problems each with 5 different cycle times are used for the comparative evaluation of heuristics. All six heuristics are coded in C++ language. Among the six considered heuristics the Hoffmann enumeration procedure performs best; but, the execution time for the Hoffmann procedure is longer because this procedure enumerates all the feasible alternative sets of tasks for the stations.