International Journal of Production Research

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Assembly line balancing with parallel workstations

Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda , Sebastián Chace & Jordi Pereira

To cite this article: Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda , Sebastián Chace & Jordi Pereira (2020): Assembly
line balancing with parallel workstations, International Journal of Production Research, DOI:
10.1080/00207543.2020.1818000

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2020.1818000

Published online: 14 Sep 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2020.1818000

Assembly line balancing with parallel workstations

Eduardo Álvarez-Mirandaa,b , Sebastián Chaceb,c and Jordi Pereirac,d
a Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Curicó, Chile; b Instituto Sistemas Complejos de Ingeniería,

Santiago, Chile; c Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile; d Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Villa del Mar, Chile

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP) considers work division among different work- Received 19 May 2020
stations of a serially arranged assembly process to maximise its efficiency under workload (cumu- Accepted 21 August 2020
lative) and technological (precedence) constraints. In this work, we consider a variant of the SALBP KEYWORDS
which allows parallel workstations. To study the effect of parallel stations, we propose a new problem Line balancing; parallel
(the parallel station assembly line balancing problem or PSALBP) in which the objective is to minimise stations; dynamic
the number of parallel stations required to obtain the maximum theoretical efficiency of the assem- programming; hybrid
bly process. We study the complexity of the problem and identify a polynomially solvable case. This metaheuristic; matheuristic
result is then used as a building block for the development of a heuristic solution procedure. Finally,
we carry out a computational experiment to identify the characteristics of assembly lines that may
benefit from station paralleling and to evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic.

1. Introduction and motivation
An assembly line is a production system frequently used
for the mass production of standardised commodity
goods. In an assembly line, unfinished products flow
through consecutive workstations. Each station succes-
sively performs a subset of the tasks required to assemble
the product until the finished product departs the line.
The assembly line balancing problem, ALBP, comprises
a broad family of problems that try to study the optimal
assignment of tasks to the workstations of the assembly
line.
Among the different ALBP formulations, the most
thoroughly studied formulation is the simple assembly
line balancing problem, referred to as the SALBP in
the literature. The SALBP depicts a basic common for-
mulation among line balancing problems. The SALBP
(see Scholl and Becker 2006) considers the assembly
of a single product whose production process has been
divided into a set of elementary operations with deter-
ministic and known task times. These tasks are to be per-
formed in m serially arranged, equally equipped work-
stations, each with an identical amount of allotted time
known as cycle time c. A solution corresponds to an
assignment of tasks to workstations such that each work-
station can perform its allotted work, i.e. the sum of the
assigned task times is no larger than c, and precedence
constraints among tasks are satisfied (i.e. if a task must
precede another task, then the first task is assigned to
an earlier workstation or to the same one as the second
task). Among the feasible assignments, the SALBP aims
to optimise line efficiency (i.e.minimise total idle time).
The most common variants of the SALBP are the SALBP-
1 (minimise m for a given c), the SALBP-2 (minimise c for
a given m) and the SALBP-E which jointly optimises cycle
time and the number of workstations for a specified range
on the number of workstations (Scholl and Becker 2006).
While the SALBP is a simplification of the real
problem faced in industrial settings, it offers a basic
framework to build more realistic models denoted as
general assembly line balancing problems, GALBPs (Bay-
bars 1986). Consequently, GALBP formulations usually
build upon the SALBP formulation by altering some of
its assumptions.
In this work, we investigate one of the SALBP
assumptions. Specifically, we analyse the effect of serially
arranged workstations on overall line efficiency. While
each serially arranged workstation sequentially performs
a different set of tasks on each unit, multiple parallel
workstations perform the same set of tasks on different
units simultaneously. As a result, the time allotted to each
parallel workstation is larger than the cycle time while
still achieving the desired assembly line throughput.
As an example of the implications of parallel work-
stations, consider the case in which each workstation
performs all the tasks required to assemble the product.
The configuration corresponds to m parallel workstations

CONTACT Jordi Pereira jorge.pereira@uai.cl Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Villa del Mar, Chile

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

2 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
(the term parallel refers to, in this context, the lack of a
serial arrangement since station ordering does not affect
behaviour in the assembly process). In such a configu-
ration, the time required by each workstation equals the
sum of task times; the workstations have no idle time and
the line throughput is the maximum for m workstations
(i.e.the time to manufacture a unit, the cycle time, equals
the time allotted to each workstation divided by the num-
ber of workstations rounded up). In other words, parallel
workstations partially circumvent cumulative and prece-
dence constraints of the SALBP and help generate better
solutions.
Even if the configuration may be optimal in terms of
line efficiency, it may not be viable from a practical stand-
point, because no amount of parallel workstations would
achieve the equivalent throughput of a serial assembly
line for hard-to-assemble products. This shows some lim-
itations of the SALBP formulation. Specifically, assembly
lines rely on work specialisation to maximise efficiency,
but the SALBP does not explicitly account for work spe-
cialisation within its assumptions. It fails to properly con-
sider the role of learning curves in assembly lines (Otto
and Otto 2014), and to properly evaluate the investment
costs associated to adequately equipping each worksta-
tion with its required tools (Pereira 2018).
Some GALBP formulations have tried to remedy this
shortcoming by either acknowledging the opportunity of
using parallel workstations and changing other assump-
tions to encourage work division (Daganzo and Blu-
menfeld 1994; Becker and Scholl 2009); allowing parallel
workstations only when serial workstations could not
deal with the workload derived from some tasks (i.e.
when operation times of some tasks exceed the cycle time
(Vilarinho and Simaria 2006); or by introducing alter-
native objectives that encourage division of work, like
cost-oriented objectives (Bukchin and Rubinovitz 2003;
Tuncel and Topaloglu 2013; Tiacci 2015a)). This work fol-
lows an alternative approach. More precisely, if we were
to allow station paralleling to maximise line efficiency
and obtain the additional degrees of efficiency, flexibil-
ity, and reliability provided by parallel workstations, one
can assume that we would still like to take advantage of
work specialisation by minimising the number of parallel
stations. This leads to an optimisation problem in which
line efficiency is a parameter (both the number of work-
stations and the cycle time are known) and we aim to
minimise the number of parallel workstations required to
achieve a line configuration under the remaining SALBP
assumptions. We refer to this problem as the parallel sta-
tion assembly line balancing problem, or PSALBP for
short.
The PSALBP formalises not only the described situ-
ation but also provides a tool to evaluate the expected
reward from introducing parallel stations within an
assembly line. An evaluation of the improvements intro-
duced by station paralleling provides some insights on
the involved trade-offs: reduced idle times at the expense
of additional equipment and labour costs required to
perform more tasks in a single workstation.
This work considers the PSALBP from both perspec-
tives. As an optimisation problem, we propose a for-
mulation and a solution method. As a tool to test the
opportunities raised by introduced limited degrees of sta-
tion paralleling, we compare optimal solutions from the
SALBP and the PSALBP to identify conditions where
station paralleling may be beneficial to line efficiency.
The remainder of this work is organised as follows.
Section 2 provides a literature review on assembly line
balancing with parallel stations and a succinct analysis
of the state-of-the-art on solution methods for assem-
bly line balancing problems. Section 3 formally intro-
duces the PSALBP and identifies a class of problems that
are polynomially solvable through a dynamic program-
ming formulation. Section 4 describes a variable neigh-
bourhood search (VNS) metaheuristic for the PSALBP
that makes use of previous results (Hoffmann 1963;
Kramer, Dell–Amico, and Iori 2017; Pereira, Ritt, and
Vásquez 2018) and the results from Section 3 to define
its neighbour structures. Section 5 reports the results of
the computational experiments conducted to compare
the SALBP and the PSALBP and to evaluate the qual-
ity of the proposed solution procedure. Finally, Section 6
gives some conclusions and identifies future research
opportunities.
2. Literature review
Work parallelisation is a common practice in assembly
lines and the literature covers multiple works consid-
ering different types of parallelisation within assembly
lines. A simple classification divides work parallelisation
strategies into two main groups. A first group in which
multiple workers perform different operations for a single
product concurrently, and a second group in which mul-
tiple workers perform the same operations for multiple
products concurrently.
The first group corresponds to line balancing config-
urations in which multiple workers share a workplace.
Two-sided assembly lines (Bartholdi 1993; Li, Kucukkoc,
and Zhang 2020), multi-manned assembly lines (Dimi-
triadis 2006; Cevikcan, Aslan, and Yeni 2020) and vari-
able worker assembly lines (Becker and Scholl 2009) are
among the most frequently studied configurations within
this group. The rationale behind the use of these con-
figurations varies among problems (e.g. products too
large to operate on every section, or space limitations

forcing multiple workers to operate simultaneously in
each workstation) but, in every case, it involves additional
complexities to the basic line balancing problem since
the problem must consider interactions among different
workers in a single workstation.
The second group corresponds to assembly line con-
figurations in which two or more independent worksta-
tions perform the same set of operations for different
units of product. Parallel workstations provide several
benefits (Buxey 1974; Bard 1989) including efficiency
improvements (through the reduction of idle times).
These benefits come at the cost of increasing equipment
requirements (more workstations may require specific
tools), and a loss in terms of worker specialisation. Since
the problem under study falls within this group, we focus
our review on this group.
Duplicating a workstation increases the total time
allotted to these workstations to perform tasks. Usually
the time allotted to each parallel workstation equals the
number of identical stations times the cycle time of the
assembly line (Bukchin and Rubinovitz 2003). Alterna-
tively, one can assume that parallel workstations is a pro-
cess selection assembly line balancing problem (Bukchin
and Tzur 2000) in which we equip each workstation with
a certain set of tools that define task times. Consequently,
two parallel workstations lead to task times equal to half
the original task times.
The literature sometimes limits station duplication
when strictly required (Vilarinho and Simaria 2006). For
instance, the task time of some task is larger than the cycle
time, but in most cases station paralleling focuses on cost
reduction (Pinto, Dannenbring, and Khumawala 1981)
or work imbalance reduction among stations (Sarker and
Shanthikumari 1983).
Cost-oriented objectives (Askin and Zhou 1997; Ege,
Azizoglu, and Özdemirel 2009; Tuncel and Topaloglu
2013) focus on the trade-off between station efficiency
and installation costs. Parallel workstations can only
improve line efficiency at the expense of additional costs.
Daganzo and Blumenfeld (1994) provides an analytical
model to study these trade-offs and concludes that station
paralleling decisions depend on the trade-offs between
installation and manpower costs.
Smoothing objectives (McMullen and Frazier 1998)
consider improvements on work division introduced by
the additional flexibility gained from parallel lines. In
Akpınar and Bayhan (2011), McMullen and Tarasewich
(2006), Simaria and Vilarinho (2001), the authors
simultaneously optimise cost and smoothing objectives
while Tiacci (2015a) evaluates these objectives through
simulation.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 3
The literature also covers station paralleling with other
common GALBP features like parallel assembly lines
(Süer 1998), mixed-model assembly lines (Vilarinho and
Simaria 2002, 2006), tasks with stochastic task times
(McMullen and Frazier 1997, 1998) and line balancing
problems with embedded scheduling decisions (Öztürk
et al. 2013; Lopes et al. 2019).
The literature covers a broad range of methods to
solve line balancing problems with parallel worksta-
tions. Among these methods, we highlight constructive
heuristics (Sarker and Shanthikumari 1983; Askin and
Zhou 1997; McMullen and Frazier 1997), enumerative
methods (Buxey 1974; Pinto, Dannenbring, and Khu-
mawala 1981; Bard 1989; Bukchin and Rubinovitz 2003),
local search methods (McMullen and Frazier 1998),
off-the-shelf integer programming software (Tuncel and
Topaloglu 2013) and metaheuristics like ant colony opti-
misation (Vilarinho and Simaria 2006), genetic algo-
rithms (Akpınar and Bayhan 2011; Tiacci 2015a, 2015b)
or simulated annealing (Simaria and Vilarinho 2001).
Table 1 summarises previous work on parallel work-
stations (other station duplication options are not con-
sidered). As the table shows, the PSALBP departs from
the previous models by imposing the maximum line effi-
ciency as a hard constraint (hence limiting the total num-
ber of workstations in the assembly line) and by consid-
ering the minimisation of the number of parallel work-
stations as its main objective. The limit on the number of
workstations enables us to maintain an efficiency-based
objective function (facilitating the comparison between
the solutions of the PSALBP and the SALBP) and to avoid
previous constraints on the solution topology impos-
ing which tasks could be parallelised. Finally, this work
also offers an alternative metaheuristic solution approach
where the neighbourhood structures make use of spe-
cific problem characteristics like the optimal resolution
of a special polynomially solvable case. The resulting
method, which can be seen as a hybrid metaheuristic
(Blum et al. 2011) or as a matheurisitic (Maniezzo, Stüt-
zle, and Voß 2010), is also a novel contribution within
the literature on assembly line balancing with parallel
workstations.
Given the similarity of the PSALBP with other line
balancing formulations, we briefly address the state-of-
the-art solution methods for the SALBP and GALBP
formulations we later use in this work.
State-of-the-art methods for the SALBP are usu-
ally constructive. Both complete (Morrison, Sewell, and
Jacobson 2014) and truncated (Fleszar and Hindi 2003;
Hoffmann 1963; Sternatz 2014) versions of the branch-
and-bound algorithm are common. In Pape (2015), the
4 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.

Table 1. Summary of previous works on parallel workstations. For each paper, we consider its objective function, assembly line char-
acteristics, when they accept parallel workstations and if they impose any limit on them, and the solution procedure described in the
paper.
Reference Objective Special Line Features Parallelism Solution Procedure
Akpınar and Bayhan (2011) line length and work zoning limited to large tasks hybrid genetic algorithm
smoothness
Askin and Zhou (1997) cost mixed model always possible greedy heuristic
Bard (1989) cost none maximum two parallel dynamic programming
stations per stage
Bukchin and Rubinovitz (2003) cost none always possible branch and bound
Buxey (1974) idle time zoning limited per production ad hoc heuristics
stage
Daganzo and Blumenfeld (1994) cost none always possible analytical model
Ege, Azizoglu, and cost equipment always possible branch and bound
Özdemirel (2009)
Lopes et al. (2019) cycle time space limitations and limited by space mixed integer programming
scheduling
McMullen and Frazier (1997) multiple metrics stochastic task times always possible greedy heuristic
McMullen and Frazier (1998) cost, smoothness, and stochastic task times always possible simulated annealing
variability
McMullen and Tarasewich (2006) multiple metrics stochastic task times always possible ant colony optimisation
Öztürk et al. (2013) completion time mixed model and disjunctive always possible mixed integer programming
constraints
Pinto, Dannenbring, and cost none limited to two workstations branch and bound
Khumawala (1981) per stage
Sarker and Shanthikumari (1983) idle time none according to idle time goal greedy
Simaria and Vilarinho (2001) idle time and workstations zoning limited in number and to simulated annealing
large tasks
Süer (1998) cycle time none global limit two phase heuristic
Tiacci (2015a) cost and performance stochastic task times always possible genetic algorithm and
simulation
Tiacci (2015b) cost and performance stochastic task times and always possible genetic algorithm and
buffers simulation
Tuncel and Topaloglu (2013) parallel workstations task assignment constraints limited to large tasks mixed integer programming
Vilarinho and Simaria (2002) line efficiency and incompatibility constraints limited to large tasks simulated annealing
workload balance
Vilarinho and Simaria (2006) line efficiency and mixed model limited to large tasks ant colony optimisation
workload balance
This work parallel workstations maximum efficiency constraint always possible variable neighbourhood search

author provides a comparison of different heuristics 3. Problem formulation

showing the applicability of constructive approaches, but
Since the PSALBP builds upon the SALBP, we first
some local search-based methods are also competitive.
introduce the SALBP and then describe the differences
More recently, Sternatz (2014) improved the Hoffmann
between both problems.
heuristic (Hoffmann 1963), increasing the overall effi-
The SALBP tries to divide set V of the n = |V| ele-
ciency of the method. Recently, Kramer, Dell–Amico, and
mentary tasks required to assemble the final product into
Iori (2017) discuss a novel local search method based on
M disjoint subsets (S1 , . . . , S|M| ) of tasks, and to define an
guiding the search with an auxiliary function.
ordering among the subsets to identify each subset with
For GALBPs, most of the literature focuses on heuris-
a workstation. Each task i ∈ V has an operation time ti , a
tics, especially if there are no tight bounds and dom-
set Pi ⊂ V of immediate preceding tasks and a set Fi ⊂ V
inance rules for the problem on hand (Scholl and
of immediate following tasks. Precedence relations may
Becker 2006; Pereira 2015). Given the relationship
be represented through a directed acyclic graph in which
between most GALBPs and the SALBP, it is com-
the set of vertices correspond to the set of tasks and there
mon to use some know-how learned from the SALBP
is an arc from i to j if task i is a predecessor of task j (i.e. if
to design effective heuristics for GALBPs (Becker and
j ∈ Fi , then there is an arc from i to j). The set of transi-
Scholl 2006; Sternatz 2014; Pereira 2018; Pereira, Ritt, and
tive predecessors (and successors) of task i derived from
Vásquez 2018).
immediate relations are denoted as Pi∗ (and Fi∗ ).
To conclude, we refer the interested reader to (Scholl
A feasible solution to the SALBP satisfies three condi-
and Becker 2006; Dolgui and Battaïa 2013) for detailed |M|
tions: (1) each task is assigned to a workstation (∪j=1 Sj =
reviews of the literature on other line balancing prob-
V), (2) the sum oftask operation times must not exceed
lems and a review of different metaheuristic approaches
the cycle time ( i∈Sj ti ≤ c ∀j ∈ M), and (3) we can
for their resolution.

order workstations in such a way that if task i is a
predecessor of task i then the workstation that per-
forms i has smaller or equal lexicographic order than the
workstation that performs i (if i ∈ Pi , i ∈ Sj and i ∈ Sj
then j ≤ j ). The objective function of the SALBP-1, the
most studied SALBP model (Scholl and Becker 2006;
Dolgui and Battaïa 2013), aims to minimise the cardi-
nality of M, that is, minimise the number of required
workstations, for a production rate (i.e. for fixed cycle
time c).
A common lower bound on the optimal objective
value of the SALBP-1 corresponds to the trivial bound
or LB1 (Scholl and Becker 2006), Equation (1).
 
i∈V ti
LB = (1)
c tions among all the production stages of the assembly
One could think of the trivial bound as the number of
workstations required to achieve maximum efficiency or
as the optimal solution to a problem in which each work-
station performs all the tasks in V; we aim to find the
minimum number of such workstations that output no
less than a unit of product each c time units.
The last description fits the PSALBP description the
best, as a SALBP-1 solution corresponds to a completely
serially arranged solution and a solution with LB parallel
workstations corresponds to a parallel arranged solution.
The difference between the number of workstations in
both solutions defines the maximum possible gain from
introducing parallelism within the assembly line.
As discussed in the introduction, the PSALBP removes
condition (6) from the SALBP. If one substitutes a group
of consecutive workstations from the SALBP-1 solu-
tion by multiple parallel workstations, the number of
workstations of the former will be no smaller than the
number of workstations of the latter; however, there is
an opportunity for improvement as the solution may
require fewer workstations to perform the same set of
tasks.
Specifically, if workstations Su , Su+1 , . . . , Sv are sub-
stituted by some parallel workstations, such a change will
lead to efficiency improvements if (2) holds.
 v  
k=u a∈Sk ta
< (v − u + 1)
c each performing tasks 1, 2 and 3 (workload equal to 37)
Let us refer to the group of workstations that perform the
same subset of tasks as a production stage, also referred
to as a station group according to Daganzo and Blumen-
feld (1994), and let us refer to the number of workstations
minus one in a production stage as the number of addi-
tional (or parallel) workstations. Note that a SALBP-1
solution has as many production stages as workstations,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 5
Figure 1. Bowman instance.
while a solution in which each workstation performs all
the tasks has one production stage.
Then, the objective of the PSALBP corresponds to the
minimisation of the total number of additional worksta-
line subject to the following constraints: (1) each task is
assigned to a production stage, (2) the sum of task oper-
ation times in each in each production stage does not
exceed the number of workstations in this stage multi-
plied by the cycle time c, (3) the production stages can be
ordered in such a way that precedence constraints among
tasks in different production stages are fulfiled, and (4)
the minimum number of workstations is used (i.e. the
total number of workstations equals (1)).
We give an example of the PSALBP, Section 3.1,
and provide a mathematical formulation, Section 3.2,
before addressing the resolution of special PSALBP
cases.
3.1. An example
Consider the classical Bowman instance (Bowman 1960),
see Figure 1, with cycle time 20. The optimal number
of stations for the SALBP-1 is 5 as both task 1 and task
2 cannot be performed with any other task due to the
precedence constraints (the remaining six tasks require
a minimum of three stations).
According to the trivial bound, we need a minimum
of 4 workstations (the sum of task times is 75, so LB =
75
20 = 4). Thus, duplicating some stations may lead to
an increase in line efficiency through the reduction of
the number of workstations in one unit. For instance, if
the first production stage comprises two parallel stations
(2)
and two additional serial workstations (one performing
tasks 4, 6 and 8 and another performing tasks 5 and 7),
the solution has only four workstations and it is optimal
for the PSALBP.
Clearly, the example shows that some degree of station
paralleling can lead to better productivity rates without
renouncing to the advantages of task division and worker
specialisation provided by traditional serial assembly
6 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
lines as the solution departs only slightly from the SALBP
solution.
3.2. An integer programming formulation
The PSALBP can be formulated using an integer pro-
gram, IP, in which the binary variables xik indicate if
production stage k performs task i, binary variables yk
represent if the solution requires production stage k, and
non-negative integer variables zk identify the number of
additional stations associated with production stage k.
Using the previous notation, model (3)–(10) pro-
vides a valid integer programming formulation for the
PSALBP.
 yk ≥ yk+1
z∗ = min zk (3)
k∈M
 described in Section 4, constraint (11) can be strength-
xik = 1 ∀i ∈ V
k∈M
 
kxi k ≤ kxik ∀i ∈ V, ∀i ∈ Pi
k∈M k∈M
 
ti xik ≤ c yk + zk ∀k ∈ M
i∈V
   solutions from the space of feasible solution.
i∈V ti
yk + z k =
c
k∈M
xik ∈ {0, 1} ∀i ∈ V, ∀k ∈ M
zk ∈ Z≥0 ∀k ∈ M
yk ∈ {0, 1} ∀k ∈ M
Objective (3) minimises the number of additional work-
stations per production stage. The objective is equal to
maximising
 the number of production stages, i.e. max-
imising k∈M yk . Constraint set (4) ensures that all
tasks are assigned to a production stage, while constraint
set (5) ensures technological (i.e.precedence) constraints.
Constraint set (6) ensures the cycle time condition and
enforces enforces use of the production stage if it per-
forms any task. Notice that any addition station in pro-
duction stage k increases the production capacity of the
said production stage. Constraint (7) ensures the effi-
ciency condition (that is, the solution contains the min-
imum number of stations). Finally, conditions (8), (9)
and (10) define the domain of the variables.
The PSALBP model implicitly accounts for the case
in which one or more tasks obligatorily require one or
more parallel workstations (i.e. any task i such that ti > c
holds) as the cycle time constraint (6) will accommodate
any required parallel workstation. It is also interesting
to point out that such an instance can be transformed
into an equivalent instance where every task complies
with the ti ≤ c condition. The modified instance has the
same set of precedence relations and task times ti =
ti − ( tci − 1)c. The solution to the modified instance
can be automatically be mapped to the original instance
with
 theti objective between both workstations varying in
i∈V c − 1 units.
While not strictly required, constraint sets (11)
and (12) help remove symmetries from the formulation.
The experiments reported in Section 5 make use of these
constraints. Also, the cardinality of M is set to be equal to
LB, Equation (1), as constraint (7) ensures that LB is an
upper bound on the number of production stages.
y1 = 1 (11)
∀k ∈ 1, . . . , |M| − 1 (12)
If a feasible solution is available, i.e. using the methods
(4) ened to take into account that a better solution is sought.
Note that constraint (7) imposes the total number of
(5) workstations. To reduce the number of parallel worksta-
tions, the number of production stages must increase.
As a result, if a solution with z additional workstations
(6) is known, (13) substitutes (11) removing non-improving
(7) yi = 1 ∀i ∈ 1, . . . , LB − z + 1 (13)
(8) Note that, as in many other line balancing problems
(Pereira 2015), the linear relaxation of model (3)–(10)
(9) provides a weak lower bound, and thus its applicabil-
(10) ity to solve PSALBP instances is limited to small-sized
instances. Specifically, the linear relaxation of (3)–(10)
has an optimal solution with objective value 0.
To prove the statement, notice that if zk = 0 for each
k ∈ M and we drop constraint set (7) from the PSALBP
formulation, the resulting constraints correspond to the
constraint set of the SALBP-1. The objective value of the
linear
 relaxation of the SALBP-1 is known to be equal to
i∈V ti
c . Consequently, the optimal solution to the linear
relaxation of the SALBP-1 also fulfils the set of con-
straints of the PSALBP, including (7), and has an objective
function value equal to 0.
3.3. Some polynomially solvable special cases
The PSALBP is NP-hard as it subsumes the feasibility
versions of the bin packing problem (Garey and John-
son 1979, problem SR1, pg. 226) and the SALBP as special
cases. Moreover, an alternative proof is also given in
Appendix. When the order of operations is known (i.e. if
precedence constraints impose a unique feasible order of
operations among the tasks), the problem is polynomially
solvable in O(n3 ) time through dynamic programming.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 7

To describe the dynamic programming recurrence Table 2. Values for cij .

used to solve the problem in polynomial time, we intro- cij 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
duce the following notation. Let (t1 , t2 , . . . , t|V| ) be the 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 3
order in which the tasks are performed and let cij (0 ≤ 1 – 0 1 1 1 2 3 3
i < j ≤ |V|) denote the number of additional worksta- 2 – – 0 0 1 1 2 2
3 – – – 0 0 1 1 1
tions required by tasks {ti+1 , ti+2 , . . . tj } if one production 4 – – – – 0 0 1 1
stage performs these tasks, see expression (14). 5 – – – – – 0 1 1
6 – – – – – – 0 0
 j  7 – – – – – – – 0
a=i+1 ta
cij = −1 (14)
c
Table 3. Optimal f (i, k) values.
Expressions (15) and (16) provide the recurrence used fi,k 1 2 3 4
to ascertain the minimum number of additional paral- 1 0 – – –
lel workstations required to perform tasks {1, . . . , i} in k 2 1 0 – –
consecutive production stages, fik . 3 1 1 0 –
4 2 1 0 0
5 2 1 1 0
fi1 = c0i (15) 6 3 2 1 0
7 3 2 2 1
fik = min fj,k−1 + cji (16) 8 3 2 2 1
k−1≤j<i

To check the correctness of (15), note that if the number

of stages equals 1, fi1 corresponds to c0i , Equation (15), To illustrate these calculations, consider the Bowman
and its correctness follows from the definition of c0i . instance introduced in Section 3.1. The task order-
To check the correctness of (16), note that if tasks ing under evaluation corresponds to task numbering
{1, . . . , i} are performed in k consecutive stages, a subset (1, 2, . . . , 8). Table 2 reports the values for cij and fi,k .
{1, . . . j} of tasks are performed in the first k−1 stages and The optimal solution corresponds to 2 as shown in
the remaining tasks, subset {j + 1, . . . i} is performed in entry f8,2 from Table 3 as f8,3 + 3 > 4. To compute entry
stage k. As the optimal number of additional workstations f8,2 , the recurrence considers assigning subsets {1}, {1, 2},
for each subset of tasks in k−1 stages are computed in {1, 2, 3}, {1, . . . , 4}, {1, . . . , 5}, {1, . . . , 6} or {1, . . . , 7} to
advance, and the recurrence compares each alternative, the first stage and the remaining tasks to the second stage
correctness holds. by calculating (16), see (18).
Once the complete recurrence is computed, the opti- ⎧ ⎫ ⎧ ⎫
mal objective value of the special PSALBP is obtained by ⎪
⎪ f1,1 + c1,8 ⎪⎪ ⎪
⎪ 0 + 3⎪⎪
⎪
⎪ + ⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ + ⎪
⎪
identifying the largest k such that f|V|,k + k equals LB and ⎪
⎪f 2,1 c 2,8 ⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ 1 2 ⎪
⎪
⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪
the optimal objective value corresponds to f|V|,k . ⎨f3,1 + c3,8 ⎬ ⎨1 + 1⎪
⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎬
Finally, we verify the complexity of O(n3 ) where n f8,2 = f4,1 + c4,8 = 2 + 1 = 2 (18)
⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪
equals |V|. First, notice that the maximum number of ⎪
⎪
⎪f5,1 + c5,8 ⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 2 + 1⎪⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
production stages is bounded by the number of tasks, ⎪
⎪f 6,1 + c ⎪
6,8 ⎪ ⎪
⎪ 3 + 0 ⎪
⎪
⎩ ⎭ ⎩ ⎭
hence, there are at most O(n2 ) values for f (i, k), each tak- f7,1 + c7,8 3+0
ing at most O(n) operations to evaluate. Therefore, the
time complexity of the calculations is bounded by O(n3 ). The optimal value comes from f3,1 , and corresponds to
Other operations, like calculating cij and retrieving the performing tasks 1, 2 and 3 in two workstations in the first
optimal objective value, are dominated by the described stage and the other tasks in two workstations in stage 2.
operation. Hence, the above recurrence provides a solu- Note that the optimal solution differs from the one found
tion for the special case under consideration in O(n3 ) in Section 3.1 as only task orderings (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 5, 7)
time and thus, the problem is polynomially solvable. or (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 4, 6, 8) may lead to the optimal solution for
Notice that if we impose an additional condition to the PSALBP instance under consideration.
limit the number of stages to two, the problem can be
solved in O(n) as we have to evaluate (17) which can be
easily performed by updating c0,j and cj,|V| while evaluat- 4. A matheuristic-based variable
ing the minimum. neighbourhood search for the PSALBP
Given the complexity of the PSALBP and the lack of
f|V|,2 = min fj,1 + cj,|V| = min c0,j + cj,|V|
1≤j<|V| 1≤j<|V| good lower bounds to rely on an enumeration proce-
(17) dure (the bounds for the SALBP do not apply to the
8 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
PSALBP), we consider a heuristic approach that com-
bines the results provided in Section 3.3, local search
procedures for previous line balancing problems (Scholl
and Voss 1997; Kramer, Dell–Amico, and Iori 2017) and
a state-of-the-art heuristic for the SALBP (Sternatz 2014)
within the variable neighbourhood search (VNS) meta-
heuristic framework (Mladenović and Hansen 1997).
The VNS provides a method to explore different neigh-
bourhoods in an orderly fashion and has been used
to solve other line balancing problems (Kellegöz 2016;
Polat et al. 2016; Sadeghi, Rebelo, and Ferreira 2018). We
can see the resulting method as a hybrid metaheuristic
(Blum et al. 2011) or a matheuristic (Maniezzo, Stüt-
zle, and Voß 2010) as it integrates different exact and
heuristic components within a single solution approach.
The implementation uses three different neighbourhood
structures.
The first neighbourhood structure, Section 4.1, tries
to improve a solution by changing the assignment of
tasks between different production stages. The neigh-
bourhood stems from previous classical neighbourhood
structures for assembly line balancing problems (Scholl
and Voss 1997; Scholl and Becker 2006) and uses an aux-
iliary function to guide the search (Kramer, Dell–Amico,
and Iori 2017).
The second neighbourhood structure, Section 4.2,
explores alternative task orderings obtained through
move and swap operators and evaluated using the
dynamic programming formulation described in
Section 3.3.
The third neighbourhood structure, Section 4.3,
adopts ideas from the Hoffmann heuristic, the state-
of-the-art constructive heuristic for the SALBP and
some GALBPs (Hoffmann 1963; Sternatz 2014), as a
local search procedure. The method optimises reduced
instances of the PSALBP using the enumerative compo-
nent of the Hoffmann until local optimality is reached.
Section 4.4 discusses implementation details includ-
ing the conversion between different solution represen-
tations used by each of the neighbourhoods.
4.1. Stage-based neighbourhoods
Let s|V| be a vector of size |V| such that i-th position of the
vector encodes the production stage that performs task
i. We refer to this representation as the stage-based rep-
resentation of a solution and it has been widely used in
the literature for line balancing and other related prob-
lems (Scholl and Voss 1997; Bautista and Pereira 2007;
Pape 2015; Kramer, Dell–Amico, and Iori 2017). Note
that not every stage-based encoding provides a feasible
solution, but all feasible solutions can be encoded using
the stage representation and feasibility is easily checked
by verifying precedence constraints and the number of
workstations required by the solution.
Local search procedures based on the stage represen-
tation use the move and swap operators.
A move, denoted as (i, su , sv ), corresponds to chang-
ing the production stage of task i from production
stage su to production stage sv . A swap, denoted as
(i, j, su , sv ) is a combination of two consecutive moves,
move (i, su , sv ) and move (j, sv , su ). We also define a spe-
cial move, denoted as (i, su , −) or (i, su , +), in which we
remove task i from production stage su , create a new
production stage before (after) production stage su , and
assign the task to the new production stage.
To decide if we accept a move or a swap, one
checks its feasibility and its suitability (objective value
improvements).
Checking for feasibility requires verifying the prece-
dence constraints and the number of workstations
required by the solution. Both operations are per-
formed by updating pre-calculated values (see Scholl and
Voss 1997; Bautista and Pereira 2007).
Regarding the suitability of a move or a swap, note that
only backward and forward special moves may improve
the objective function value of the incumbent solution,
i.e. the PSALBP ensures maximum efficiency by impos-
ing that the assembly line is made up of exactly the min-
imum possible number of workstations. Consequently,
and to reduce the number of parallel workstations, one
has to increase the number of production stages while
maintaining the total number of workstations. Hence, the
basic move and swap operators do not change the number
of stages if a solution is to remain feasible.
The SALBP-1 suffers from a similar issue as the solu-
tion landscape has few improving moves (Scholl and
Voss 1997). To remedy this issue, one may solve a
sequence of problems with an alternative solution land-
scape (Scholl and Voss 1997; Bautista and Pereira 2007)
or one may use an auxiliary function to guide the search
(Kramer, Dell–Amico, and Iori 2017).
In this work, we adopt the second approach and focus
on an auxiliary function similar to the one proposed in
Kramer, Dell–Amico, and Iori (2017). The auxiliary func-
tion z(s|V| ), see Equation (20), tries to create production
stages favourable for the application of special moves (i.e.
those that can improve the solution). Let Tk denote the
sum of task times of production stage k according to the
task assignment s|V| , then (19) provides the contribution
to the auxiliary function for production stage k.
  2
Tk
|V| c − Tk if T k > c
wk (s )= c (19)
0 otherwise

wk (s|V| ) provides smaller (better) values for production
stages with two or more workstations and small idle
times. Moreover, the square operator amplifies the pref-
erence for such extreme solutions. As a side effect of
prioritising the generation of these production stages,
other production stages will tend to have larger idle times,
increasing the chances of finding feasible special moves.
The auxiliary function also encourages moves and swaps
that lead to increased idle time of production stages with
one workstation. In order to avoid such an undesired
effect, we reject moves or swaps that increase the idle time
of a production stage with only one workstation and we
accept any move or swap that decreases the idle time of
such a production stage.

z(s|V| ) = wk (s|V| ) (20)
k∈M
The procedure simultaneously explores the move and
swap neighbourhoods while trying to optimise (20).
After performing any move or swap, special moves are
tested and if one is found to be feasible, it is implemented.
4.2. List-based neighbourhoods
The PSALBP can be seen as the combination of a
sequencing problem (defining the assembly sequence)
and an assignment problem (the problem of assigning
tasks to production stages). The results from Section 3.3
show that the second problem, assignment, is polynomi-
ally solvable if the solution to the first problem is known.
Hence, it makes sense to consider the search for different
assembly sequences and to evaluate their performance by
optimally assigning tasks to production stages.
Consequently, a solution is represented as a list, a per-
mutation, of tasks. The list is said to be feasible if the order
in the list complies with the precedence constraints, i.e. if
task i precedes task j, task i must appear before task j in
the list.
The list-based (or permutation-based) representation
enables the use of classical neighbourhood operators for
these problems. Specifically, we use the move and swap
operators. A swap corresponds to exchanging the posi-
tion of two elements within the list, and a move corre-
sponds to sliding an element from its current position in
the list to a different position in the list.
Let σi be the task in the ith position (i = 1, . . . , |V|) of
the list and let σi−1 be the position of task i in the list.
A swap (i, j) between tasks i and j involves exchanging
σi and σj (with the resulting changes to σi−1 and σj−1 .
A move of task i to position k is a sequence of swaps
(i, i + 1) ∪ (i + 1, i + 2) ∪ . . . ∪ (k − 1, k) or (i − 1, i) ∪
(i − 2, i − 1) ∪ . . . ∪ (k, k + 1).
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 9
As in the stage-based neighbourhoods, one has to
check the feasibility and suitability of a solution gener-
ated through a move or a swap. We check the feasibility
of the solution by incrementally updating pre-calculated
values as in Section 4.1. We check suitability by evaluating
the list using one of the dynamic formulations described
in Section 3.3, leading to different neighbourhood
structures.
We consider two different neighbourhood structures,
namely (1) a neighbourhood structure that simultane-
ously explores a restricted subset of swaps and moves
involving tasks assigned to one production stage, and
(2) a neighbourhood structure that considers moves and
swaps involving tasks in any production stage. The first
structure uses the linear time recurrence to evaluate
the solution and the second structure uses the general
recurrence.
Exploration of the search space becomes impractical
for very large size instances (instances with n = 1000).
Evaluating the objective function of any neighbourhood
solution is O(n3 ) and each solution has a number of
neighbours quadratic to the number of tasks, hence the
time order of the heuristic and the size of the instances
make the method impracticable. Consequently, for very
large size instances, we do not explore this neighbour-
hood.
4.3. The Hoffmann-based neighbourhood
The Hoffmann heuristic is a truncated enumeration
scheme originally proposed as a heuristic method for the
SALBP (Hoffmann 1963). It is a state-of-the-art heuris-
tic for the SALBP (Morrison, Sewell, and Jacobson 2014;
Sternatz 2014) and for some GALBP formulations (Ster-
natz 2014; Pereira 2018; Pereira, Ritt, and Vásquez
2018).
The method is a truncated branch-and-bound that
generates a large number of feasible assignments for
the first (last) unassigned workstation, chooses the best
among the generated assignments according to some
heuristic selection rule, and repeats the previous steps
until it finds a complete solution. While the theoreti-
cal complexity of the method does not improve over
the complexity of a branch-and-bound algorithm, several
improvements over the original proposal avoid falling
into its worst-case behaviour.
Recently, the enumeration component of the heuris-
tic has been used to define a local search procedure for
a GALBP formulation (Pereira, Ritt, and Vásquez 2018).
The method in Pereira, Ritt, and Vásquez (2018) re-
optimises the assignment of tasks and resources of two
consecutive workstations. The method acts as a local
search method whose neighbourhood corresponds to all
10 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
the solutions involved in a subproblem found within the
original problem. The method proposed for the PSALBP
tries to divide one production stage from the incum-
bent solution into two production stages, a partition
which leads to improving the objective function value
by one unit (i.e. adding one production stage to the
solution reduces the number of parallel workstations
by one).
The partition of a production stage into two consecu-
tive stages can be formalised as follows. We are given the
set of tasks Sk from production stage k, each with its cor-
responding task time and precedence relations, and we
aim to find two subsets Sk1 ∪ Sk2 = Sk such that prece-
dence constraints are fulfilled (i.e. if i ∈ Sk1 , j ∈ Sk and j ∈
Pi then j ∈ Sk1 ). For the partition to improve the incum-
bent solution, the total number of workstations should
not change; i.e. Equation (21) must hold.
    
i∈Sk ti i∈Sk1 ti i∈Sk2 ti
= +
c c c is satisfied, the solution is already feasible for the PSALBP
Finding if such a partition exists is NP-hard in strong
sense, see Appendix 1. Nevertheless, the method enumer-
ates alternative assignments for the first stage (the second
stage corresponds to the remaining tasks) until a speci-
fied number of alternative assignments has been enumer-
ated. Consequently, it heuristically solves the problem by
truncating the exact search.
The implementation enumerates the set of assign-
ments for the first production stage using the recur-
sive method described in Fleszar and Hindi (2003). The
recursion enumerates feasible assignments by adding
tasks to a tentative assignment of tasks for the first stage.
Tasks are added according to their order in a list that
constitutes an input of the method and the results may
vary depending on that given order. The ordering used in
this work orders the tasks of the considered production
stage according to precedence constraints (i.e. a preced-
ing task is located earlier in the list than a succeeding
task) with ties broken lexicographically (i.e. according to
task number in the instance file). Whenever the method
identifies a subset of tasks, it is checked for feasibil-
ity, Equation (21). This method stops after finding any
improving assignment or reaching a limit on the num-
ber of assignments enumerated (much like in Morrison,
Sewell, and Jacobson 2014). Consequently, if the limit
truncates the search, the ordered list explicitly defines
which subsets of the assignments are considered. The
number of candidate assignments is a parameter of the
algorithm and fine-tuned in a preliminary experiment,
see Section 5.
4.4. Implementation details
The VNS metaheuristic implementation is defined by
its neighbourhood structures, its order of application,
a method to generate an initial solution and a restart
mechanism when the method reaches local optimality.
Our implementation also needs a mechanism to convert
solutions between different representations as different
neighbourhood structures use different representations.
We proceed to illustrate each component separately.
Initial solution. i We use the relationship between the
SALBP and the PSALBP to obtain the initial solution. The
procedure starts from a feasible solution for the SALBP
and iteratively groups on consecutive production stages
until we obtain a feasible PSALBP solution. The method
can be seen as repair heuristic. The repair heuristic is
initialised with a feasible solution for the SALBP. Each
workstation of the initial solution is mapped to a produc-
 tion stage of the PSALBP and if the number of production
stages coincides with the trivial bound, i.e.constraint (7)
(21)
and we stop. Otherwise, the method groups a subset
of consecutive stages to reduce the number of worksta-
tions, i.e. we seek k consecutive production stages such
that the number of workstations required to perform
their assigned tasks is strictly smaller than the number
of workstations required by the production stages sepa-
rately. Such a grouping always exists (grouping all pro-
duction stages into a single production stage always ren-
ders a solution with the desired number of workstations)
but multiple groupings may exist. In such a case, the
method selects a random grouping among those with the
smallest cardinality. Our implementation uses the solu-
tion for the SALBP provided by the Hoffmann heuristic
as implemented in Morrison, Sewell, and Jacobson (2014)
and available at http://www.assembly-line-balancing.de.
Neighbourhood implementation details. First, we
explore the stage-based neighbourhoods described in
Section 4.1. The implementation first considers all pos-
sible task swaps involving tasks according to their lexi-
cographic order (provided by the instance file); that is,
swaps (i, j, su , sv ) are evaluated according to the non-
decreasing lexicographic order of i with ties broken
according to the lexicographic order of j. Moreover, and
to avoid symmetries, we impose i < j for a swap to be
considered. Whenever an improving move is found, it is
implemented and special moves are tested. Only special
moves from the production stages involved in the change
are evaluated, and the order of evaluation corresponds
to their lexicographic order (earlier production stages
first). Special moves are then tested according to the lex-
icographic order of the task with (i, su , −) special moves

being evaluated first and (i, su , +) moves being evaluated
afterwards.
After reaching local optimality for the swap
neighbourhood, the method considers moves. The order
in which moves are considered is according to the lexi-
cographic order (tasks with smaller lexicographic order
are considered first). For any given task, moves are evalu-
ated in increasing order of the receiving production stage.
Whenever a move improves the auxiliary objective func-
tion, it is automatically implemented and both the receiv-
ing and the departing production stages are explored
for special moves. As in the previous case, the earliest
production stage is considered first, with tasks within
each production stage being considered in lexicographic
order, first for a (., ., −) move, and then for a (., ., +)
move. Whenever a special move improves the incum-
bent solution, it is automatically implemented. Once a
swap is implemented, the procedure continues evaluat-
ing other tasks according to the proposed rules until local
optimality is verified.
Moreover, if any move improves the solution, feasible
swaps are explored again (see Algorithm).
After reaching local optimality for the stage-based
neighbourhood, we explore the Hoffmann-based
neighbourhood. The Hoffmann neighbourhood consid-
ers each production stage in order starting from the first
production stage to the final production stage. As in the
stage-based neighbourhoods, whenever an improving
neighbour solution is found, it becomes the incumbent
solution, the search is resumed with the next production
stage until no more production stages can be improved
with the said neighbourhood.
Finally, we consider the list-based neighbourhood.
Like the stage-based neighbourhoods, we first consider
swaps and then moves, but in this case, the order in which
tasks are considered follows their order in the solution.
Specifically, tasks are considered for a move in reverse
order to their position in the list. Pairs of tasks are con-
sidered for a swap in reverse order to the last position
of the two tasks in the list with ties broken according to
the position of the other task. Moreover, we first limit
the case study to swaps affecting tasks in two consecutive
production stages before considering general swaps and
moves.
The proposed ordering tries to minimise the effort
spent evaluating the list representation using the dynamic
programming recurrences described in Section 3.3. First,
if only two stages are involved, there is a linear time
evaluation method. Second, given the particularities of
the dynamic programming recurrence, the calculations
required to evaluate the incumbent solution can be
reused to evaluate any neighbour solution. Specifically,
the recurrence table does not change until there are
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 11
differences between the lists. Hence, it is beneficial to
consider changes in later positions first because they
require less computations.
The proposed order among the three neighbour-
hoods is based on preliminary experiments to reduce the
time required to reach local optimality for each neigh-
bourhood. Moreover, experiments showed that the swap
neighbourhood is smaller and thus faster to compute,
hence the proposed order for task- and list-based neigh-
bourhoods.
Perturbation mechanism. The perturbation mecha-
nism tries to force a move that ensures that the solution
escapes from its current local optimum. The perturbation
performs multiple random swaps in the list-based repre-
sentation of the solution. Specifically, the local solution is
restarted by performing k random swaps.
Solution representation. The method uses two alter-
natives to represent a solution. The stage-based and the
Hoffman-based methods use a stage-based representa-
tion where the solution indicates which production stage
performs each task, while the list-based method encodes
the solution as a sequence, a permutation, of tasks. Con-
sequently, we have to devise methods to switch between
these representations as needed.
There is no one-to-one correspondence between these
representations. While it is possible to map each list
representation to a unique stage representation through
the resolution of the dynamic programming recurrence
described in Section 3.3, there is more than one list for
any stage encoding. In fact, any ordered list of tasks such
that (2) preceding tasks appear in the list before succes-
sors, and (2) tasks in earlier production stages appear in
the list before tasks in later production stages, is a valid
list representation of the original stage-based solution.
Besides this multiplicity, there is no guarantee that decod-
ing the list back to a stage representation provides the
original stage representation, and it is even possible that
the decoding step improves the objective function value
of the solution.
Consequently, when the method converts a solution
from stage to list representation, we generate multiple
alternative orders complying with the imposed condi-
tions and select the one with the best objective value to
become the list-based incumbent solution. The number
of lists generated is an algorithmic parameter controlled
in a preliminary experiment reported in Section 5.1.
4.5. Overall structure of the algorithm
Algorithm 1 outlines the final algorithm. Line 1 obtains
an initial solution and becomes the best-known solution.
The functions executed in lines 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 apply
the neighbourhood structures according to increasing
12 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
computational loads. Once local optimality is verified,
the best-known, is updated. Finally, the solution is per-
turbed, line 10, and the loop is repeated until the termi-
nation condition is met.
Algorithm 1 Variable Neighbourhood Search
implementation
Input: A PSALBP instance.
Output: A solution to the PSALBP.
1: Generate an initial solution through the Hoffmann-
based heuristic. Initialise best-known.
2: while Termination condition is not satisfied do
3: Explore the stage-based swap neighbourhood
(Section 4.1) according to the description given
in Section 4.4. Repeat this step until no further
changes are possible.
4: Explore the stage-based move neighbourhood
(Section 4.1) according to the description given
in Section 4.4. Repeat this step until no further
changes are possible and go to line 3 if an improv-
ing move was found.
5: Explore the Hoffmann-based neighbourhood
(Section 4.3) according to the details outlined in
Section 4.4. Go to line 3 if the step improves the
incumbent solution.
6: Convert the incumbent solution from the stage
representation to the list representation
7: Explore the list-based swap neighbourhood
(Section 4.2) according to the details provided in
Section 4.4.
Explore the list-based move neighbourhood
8:
(Section 4.2) according to the details provided
in Section 4.4. If line 7 or line 8 improved the
incumbent solution, go to line 3.
9: Convert the incumbent solution from the list rep-
resentation to the stage representation.
10: Perturb solution using the restart mechanism (see
Section 4.4).
11: end while
5. Computational experiment
To test the proposed methods and determine possi-
ble improvements derived from workstation paralleling,
the models and algorithms described in this work were
implemented in C++, compiled using the GCC com-
piler version 8.3.1 and run on a 32 processor Intel Xeon
E5-2650 2 GHz CPU with 128GB RAM running the
Linux operating system. The IBM CPLEX library ver-
sion 12.7.1 is used to solve integer linear programming
models. Since the code does not use any parallelism and
memory requirements are low, the 32 processors were
used to solve 32 independent instances simultaneously.
The benchmark set for the SALBP described in Otto,
Otto, and Scholl (2013) is used in the experiment.
The instances are available at http://www.assembly-line-
balancing.de and follow a factorial design that enables
evaluation of the impact of different instance character-
istics in algorithm performance and the structure of the
optimal solutions
• Instance size. The instances are divided into four
groups according to the number of tasks (n): small
(n = 20), medium (n = 50), large (n = 100), and very
large (n = 1000).
• Task time distribution. The instances are divided into
three groups: bottom task times in which tasks have an
average operation time equal to 10% of the cycle time;
middle task times in which the average task time is 50%
of the cycle time; and mixed task times in which both
bottom and middle tasks are present.
• Order strength of the precedence relations. The order
strength (OS) corresponds to the ratio between the
number of precedence relations and the maximum
number of precedence relations among tasks, (22).
Consequently, the larger the order strength, the
larger the number of precedence relations among
tasks. Three values are used: low (OS = 0.2), medium
(OS = 0.6), and high (OS = 0.9) instances are
considered.
|V| ∗
i=1 |Fi |
(22)
|V|(|V| − 1)/2
• Structure of the precedence relations. The set contains
three different precedence structures: chain struc-
tures in which precedence relations were generated to
ensure that there are ‘chains’ of multiple tasks with
one predecessor and one successor; bottleneck struc-
tures in which precedence relations were generated
to ensure that there are ‘bottleneck’ tasks (i.e. there
are some tasks that have multiple predecessors and
multiple successors); and mixed structures in which
precedence relations were randomly generated. Chain
and bottleneck structures try to emulate common pro-
duction patters (a ‘chain’ corresponds to subsets of
operations that need to be performed in a fixed order,
while ‘bottleneck’ tasks correspond to subsets of tasks
that can be performed in any order followed by a
common successor, like a quality control operation.
For each combination of characteristics, the instance
set contains 25 instances (with the exception of instances
with high order strength in which only mixed prece-
dence graphs are feasible). Consequently, the set contains

a total of 2,100 instances. For details on the instances,
the construction method and the rationale behind the
different characteristics is provided in Otto, Otto, and
Scholl (2013). It is also worth mentioning that the opti-
mal SALBP solution for all small and medium instances,
as well as the majority of large and very large instances,
is known. Moreover, for a large subset of these instances,
the optimal SALBP objective value is equal to the triv-
ial bound (i.e. there is an assignment of tasks to stages
with the minimum number of workstations even with-
out requiring parallel workstations), and thus the optimal
PSALBP solution is 0. Note that the existence of such
solutions does not imply that these instances are trivial
(Otto, Otto, and Scholl 2013, for a discussion), but rather
that the optimal solution is known.
We report the results of three different experiments:
• A first experiment, see Section 5.1, to calibrate the
parameters of the proposed VNS using an iterated
Friedman as implemented in the R irace package
(López-Ibáñez et al. 2016).
• A second experiment, see Section 5.2, to evaluate the
performance of the VNS when compared to three
alternative procedures that act as baseline methods.
• A third experiment, Section 5.3, to compare the opti-
mal solutions of the PSALBP and the SALBP in small-
sized instances. This experiment tries to draw some
insights on the possible benefits of station paralleling
on assembly line efficiency.
We do not report results with instances where task
times are longer than the cycle time because these
instances can be solved by solving a related instance
where the task times are no longer than the cycle time,
see Section 3.2.
5.1. Parameter settings
The proposed VNS uses three parameters; namely:
• The number of swaps to perturb an incumbent solu-
tion after reaching local optimality (row ‘Perturbation’
in Table 4).
• The number of alternative lists to evaluate when con-
verting a solution from the stage to the list representa-
tion (row ‘Stage to list’ in Table 4).
• The number of candidate assignments considered by
the Hoffmann heuristic before stopping the search
(row ‘Hoffmann’ in Table 4).
To fine-tune the parameter values, we use the irace
package (López-Ibáñez et al. 2016). Irace implements
an iterated Friedman race to compare among candidate
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 13
Table 4. Algorithmic parameters for 600s time limit. For each
parameter of the VNS (rows), the initial range of values provided
to irace, column Initial range, and the best combination of param-
eters, column Best, found by the method are reported.
Best
Parameter Initial range n ≤ 100 n = 1000
Perturbation [1,25] 1 1
Stage to list [1,100] 4 69
Hoffmann [1,10000] 4040 9622
parameter settings. Irace can be seen as a heuristic
approach to obtain parameter configurations for a heuris-
tic that repeatedly performs the following steps: (1) it
samples the parameters used in the metaheuristic from
a given distribution (in our case, a discrete distribution
for each parameter); (2) it selects the best parameter
configurations by evaluating their performance in some
instances (i.e. solving the instance for a fixed amount of
time with the said set of parameters) and then comparing
their results by performing a Friedman non-parametric
test; and (3) it updates the distribution to favour the best
performing (statistically better) configurations found in
the second step. These steps are repeated until a compu-
tational budget (in our case, a total of 10, 000 evaluations
each with a 600s time limit) is consumed. We conducted
two separate experiments, a first one to identify param-
eters to solve small, medium and large instances and a
second to identify parameters for very large instances.
The difference tries to account for changes derived from
the inability to use list neighbourhoods in very large
instances.
The experiments use random instances with middle
task time distributions. We chose these instances as they
are hard to solve for the SALBP and we expect similar
behaviour for the PSALBP.
Table 4 reports the initial parameter ranges provided
to irace and summarises the results reported by each
experiment as well as the best parameter settings found in
the experiment. These settings highlight the differences
between instance size and deserve some analysis.
First, the larger the instance size, the larger the num-
ber of partial assignments to enumerate with the Hoff-
mann method. Very large instances benefit from test-
ing a larger number of trial permutations to move from
stage to list representation. We believe that both results
relate to the lack of list-based neighbourhoods when
solving very large instances. As an alternative, the VNS
relies on alternative methods. Specifically, the method
to transform a solution between representation can be
seen as a search method that tests similar (i.e. neighbour)
lists. This interpretation is confirmed by the degrada-
tion in solution quality if a smaller number of lists is
used.
14 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.

Second, the number of perturbations required to Table 5. Results from the proposed algorithms, columns IP, ran-
restart the search is significantly small. In both cases, dom, repair and VNS. The table reports for each group of tasks (the
we perform a single random swap between two tasks in rows), the number of instances, column #, and the number of best-
known solutions found, column # best, and average absolute gap,
the list-based representation. We believe that the small column gap, provided by each algorithm.
number of perturbations should be attributed to the use
IP random repair VNS
of a random method to move between solution rep-
resentations. As randomness plays an important role Parameter # #best gap #best gap #best gap #best gap

in the transformation, minor changes are sufficiently n

20 525 523 0.00 522 0.01 382 0.64 525 0.00
strong to escape from the local optimality reached by 50 525 342 2.79 310 1.86 324 3.10 525 0.00
the structured neighbourhoods. Consequently, the con- 100 525 240 9.67 116 7.49 303 7.44 525 0.00
1000 525 0 201.97 0 156.36 322 62.41 525 0.00
tribution of the traditional restart mechanism is marginal
Task Times
and moving between alternative representations provides Small 700 501 34.13 462 22.77 685 0.26 700 0.00
enough diversity to the search method. Middle 700 174 71.82 185 57.51 49 50.96 700 0.00
Bimodal 700 430 54.88 301 44.00 597 3.97 700 0.00
Third, the above parameters have been fine-tuned
OS
considering a time limit of 600s. Consequently, they 0.2 900 490 57.35 391 45.35 620 15.73 900 0.00
account for the trade-offs between methods for this time 0.6 900 475 53.15 406 41.05 583 19.36 900 0.00
0.9 300 140 43.78 151 30.80 128 23.51 300 0.00
limit. For instance, limiting the number of candidate
Graph
assignments in the Hoffmann heuristic reduces the time Block 600 326 56.73 269 44.41 405 16.69 600 0.00
spent on that heuristic. As a result, the method may per- Chain 600 319 53.96 264 42.15 395 17.94 600 0.00
form a larger number of VNS iterations at the expense Mixed 900 460 51.29 415 38.96 531 19.85 900 0.00

of not finding an improving solution in the Hoffmann

neighbourhood even when one exists.
5.2. Results for the VNS
To test the quality of the results obtained by the VNS
implementation, we compare its performance with three
alternative methods.
The first method, which we will refer to as IP,
corresponds to resolving the formulation depicted in
Section 3.2 using the IBM CPLEX commercial solver
with no initial solution provided.
The second method, which we will refer to as ran-
dom, generates random lists of tasks that comply with
the precedence constraints and evaluates them using
the dynamic programming recurrence described in
Section 3.3.
The third method, which we will refer to as repair,
corresponds to the initial solution provided by the repair
heuristic used to initialise the VNS.
These methods are referred to as baseline methods
since they compare the performance of the VNS to (1)
resolution through a general purpose solver, (2) applica-
tion of the theoretical properties described in this paper
without the metaheuristic framework and (3) use of exist-
ing SALBP procedures to tackle the PSALBP.
Each method, except for the repair heuristic, is run
with a time limit of 600 s. The repair heuristic has no time
limit and takes much less than the allotted time for the
rest of heuristics, always less than a few seconds in our
computing environment.
Table 5 provides a comparison among these methods
according to instance characteristics. For each algorithm,
we report the number of best-found solutions and the
average absolute gap (average number of additional par-
allel workstations required when compared to the best-
known) among the group of instances.
The results suggest that the improvements of the VNS
metaheuristic are significant for all instance character-
istics and sizes. The VNS outperforms each method in
every group of instances, but it is worth mentioning
that the IP is a viable option to solve smaller (n = 20)
instances.
Table 5 hints at the limitations of the different meth-
ods. The applicability of the IP is limited to small
instances, and the random method fails to outperform
the IP in terms of best-known solutions (it does consis-
tently improve average absolute gaps). When we compare
the random approach and the repair heuristic, we observe
that the results of the random heuristic are more uniform
across instance characteristics, while the repair heuristic
provides very good solutions except for the middle task
time distribution in which its performance deteriorates
significantly. We observe the same behaviour for every
method with the exception of the VNS, but it is more
remarkable for the repair heuristic.
When we evaluate the performance of the VNS meta-
heuristic, we observe that it obtains the best-know solu-
tions for every instance, a logical result that it contains the
repair heuristic as the initial solution and a guided ran-
dom heuristic as a component of the method. The differ-
ences between the VNS and the other methods increase
as the instances become more difficult. Specifically, the
major gains provided by the VNS correspond to instances
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 15

Table 6. Results for the proposed algorithms, columns IP, ran- distribution of task times of the related instance. The
dom, repair and VNS, for large (n = 100) instances. The table VNS results are no worse than the alternative method for
reports for each group of instances grouped according to order every task time distribution, the recommended solution
strength, column OS, graph type, column graph, and task time
distribution, column Task times, the average minimum number method would not vary.t
of production stages, column Bound, and the average number of Finally, a repeated measures ANOVA test was con-
production stages provided by each method. ducted to conclude whether there were significant differ-
OS Graph Task times Bound IP random repair VNS ences among the four proposed methods. Each instance
0.2 Block bottom 14.12 13.52 13.12 14.12 14.12
was considered as a block and the four algorithms as
middle 50.40 14.40 19.76 18.60 38.80 the treatments. The results of the ANOVA test indi-
bimodal 22.64 20.48 17.32 22.64 22.64 cate significant differences (p-value < 0.0005), but the
Chain bottom 14.28 14.08 13.56 14.28 14.28
middle 49.76 10.48 17.56 15.28 36.04 residuals were not normally distributed. Consequently,
bimodal 22.88 17.92 16.44 22.64 22.80 we performed a Friedman non-parametric test to ensure
Mixed bottom 14.12 13.40 13.08 14.12 14.12
middle 50.48 13.84 19.92 20.00 38.84 that the differences were significant even under non-
bimodal 22.76 20.24 16.64 22.76 22.76 normality assumptions. The test reports significant dif-
0.6 Block bottom 14.24 13.60 13.24 14.24 14.24 ferences among solution methods with a p-value <
middle 50.32 13.84 22.20 19.24 39.32
bimodal 22.52 17.92 16.32 21.64 22.32 0.0005.
Chain bottom 13.92 13.36 13.08 13.92 13.92
middle 50.52 7.68 16.40 10.16 30.92
bimodal 22.76 16.60 16.36 19.20 22.48 5.3. Comparison between the PSALBP and the
Mixed bottom 14.32 14.04 13.56 14.32 14.32
middle 50.16 10.04 17.52 12.32 33.40 SALBP solutions
bimodal 22.92 18.00 16.84 19.60 22.68
0.9 Mixed bottom 14.12 11.28 12.40 10.28 13.08
This section further investigates the differences between
middle 50.80 7.60 17.60 10.12 25.28 the SALBP and the PSALBP to identify assembly process
bimodal 23.16 11.68 16.88 11.36 20.72 characteristics that may benefit from station paralleling.
To avoid interference from specific solution methods
in the analysis, we limit the study to instances solved to
with very large (n = 1000) and middle task time distri- optimality. The results from Table 5 suggest that CPLEX
butions. These results agree with previous results for the can solve small instances to optimality. Consequently, we
SALBP as these are the characteristics found in the most solved all small instances to optimality and compare their
difficult instances for the SALBP-1. number of production stages with the optimal number
In order to further illustrate the results and the VNS of workstations for the SALBP, (Morrison, Sewell, and
improvements, Table 6 compares the random, repair and Jacobson 2014).
VNS for large instances (n = 100) grouped according to Table 7 reports the results of the comparison. The
each of its characteristics. The table reports the average table groups instances according to their characteristics,
number of production stages obtained by each method, and reports the trivial lower bound, column Bound, the
and the average trivial bound among instances from each optimal number of workstations for the SALBP, column
group. As the difference between a solution and the triv- SALBP, and the optimal number of production stages for
ial lower bound corresponds to the number of parallel the PSALBP, column PSALBP. While the SALBP tries
workstations, the higher the reported number, the better. to minimise the number of workstations, we report the
Table 6 stresses the relevance of task time distribution PSALBP as a maximisation problem whose objective is to
to assess instance difficulty and the potential gains from maximise the number of production stages. This objec-
station paralleling. The gaps between the trivial bound, tive is equivalent to minimising the number of parallel
column Bound, and the solutions found by the differ- workstations, the objective proposed in Section 3.2, and
ent methods are null or very small for most instance offers a fair comparison between the SALBP and the
groups except for middle task time distributions and high PSALBP (if both values coincide, the optimal SALBP is
order strength instances with bimodal task time distribu- also optimal for the PSALBP and the difference between
tions. For these instances, the VNS improves upon both the bound and each optimal value measures the ineffi-
the random and the repair methods and provides solu- ciencies of both solutions).
tions in which the number of required parallel stations, The results from Table 7 follow a similar trend as those
i.e. the difference between the bound and the number of found in Table 6. Namely, the SALBP and the PSALBP
production stages, is significantly reduced. solutions coincide with the trivial bound for most
Note that if task times were longer than the cycle instance characteristics. The results reported in Morri-
time, the PSALBP solution would vary accordingly, and son, Sewell, and Jacobson (2014), Pereira (2015) were
the expected results would follow the results from the similar and allow us to identify task time distribution
16 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.

Table 7. Results for the optimal methods. For each grouping of ANOVA permutation test where the same factors and
instances, the rows, defined by its order strength, graph struc- interactions were found to be statistically significant.
ture and distribution of task times, the average lower bound on Given that the previous results imply that the distribu-
the number of workstations, column Bound, the average number
of workstations required by the optimal solutions for the SALBP, tion of task times is the most important feature to assess
column SALBP, and the average number of production stages the gains derived from station paralleling, we derive a
required by the optimal solutions for the PSALBP, column PSALBP secondary instance set to further study this effect.
are reported. To understand the logic behind the generation of these
OS Graph Task times Bound SALBP PSALBP new instances, of these new instances, an alternative
0.2 block bottom 3.00 3.00 3.00 description of the bottom and middle task time distri-
middle 10.80 12.16 9.00 butions considers them different ideal ratios of tasks per
bimodal 4.84 4.84 4.84
chain bottom 3.08 3.08 3.08 workstation. Under such a description, bottom instances
middle 10.48 11.72 8.84 have an average of 10 tasks per workstation while middle
bimodal 5.08 5.08 5.08 instances have an average of 2 tasks per workstation. By
mixed bottom 3.08 3.08 3.08
middle 10.52 12.00 8.68 increasing the cycle time, middle instances would become
bimodal 5.20 5.20 5.20 bottom instances (under the assumption that the stan-
0.6 block bottom 2.96 2.96 2.96 dard deviation used to draw tasks times was identical).
middle 10.44 12.04 8.28
bimodal 5.24 5.28 5.20 Consequently, we generate new instances by changing the
chain bottom 3.00 3.00 3.00 cycle time to desired ratios of tasks per workstation.
middle 10.48 11.96 8.00
bimodal 5.08 5.28 4.84 The original set contains 175 instances with n = 20
mixed bottom 3.08 3.08 3.08 and middle task time distribution. These instances are
middle 10.32 11.84 7.72
bimodal 5.24 5.28 5.12
solved with 9 different cycle times (from 1000 to 5000 in
0.9 mixed bottom 3.04 3.04 3.04 steps of 500 time units). Table 8 compares the optimal
middle 10.40 12.56 6.84 solutions found for the SALBP, using the branch, bound
bimodal 5.28 5.40 5.12
and remember method described in Morrison, Sewell,
and Jacobson (2014), and for the PSALBP, using the for-
mulation discussed in Section 3.2. Given the large num-
as the main source of inefficiencies (idle times) in the ber of parameter combinations (order strength, graph
SALBP. Specifically, as the difference between the triv- structure and cycle times), we only report those groups
ial bound and the number of production stages in the in which the optimal solution for the SALBP and the
PSALBP correspond to the number of parallel stations PSALBP does not coincide (i.e. instances in which the
required to achieve maximum efficiency, we conclude trivial bound is not equal to the SALBP solution).
that small degrees of parallelism suffice to reach maxi- The results in Table 8 further stress the relevance of
mum efficiency. task time distributions. Slight changes in the number of
The order strength of the instances also plays an tasks per workstation significantly decrease the ineffi-
important role in this trade-off. For instances with mid- ciencies of the SALBP. Moreover, the number of parallel
dle task time distribution and OS = 0.2, an average 1.9 workstations required to obtain the maximum theoret-
(out of 10.6) parallel workstations are required; while ical efficiency is also minimal. This results show that a
for OS = 0.6, the number increases to 2.4 and to 3.56 limited use of station paralleling can lead to optimal,
for OS = 0.9. If we consider the number of workstations in terms of idle time, assembly lines. Table 8 also high-
saved by station paralleling, these values are respectively lights the role of order strength and graph structure in
1.36, 1.5 and 2.16 for OS = 0.2, OS = 0.6 and OS = 0.9. the results, as instances with low order strengths and an
The previous analysis was confirmed by a three-way average number of tasks per workstation equal to 5 fea-
ANOVA analysis in which the response variable was ture no inefficiencies, while instances with a higher order
set to the difference between the number of production strength still lead to inefficient solutions with larger ratios
stages of the SALBP and the PSALBP. The p-value for of tasks per workstation.
the OS and task time distribution factors were statistically While this study is limited to small instances in which
significant (p-value < 0.0005), while the structure factor we can solve the SALBP and the PSALBP to optimal-
was not significant. Moreover, the interaction between ity, we believe that results can be extrapolated for larger
OS and task time distribution was statistically signifi- instances since the observed pattern for medium, large
cant (p-value < 0.0005), while the remaining interactions and very large instances showed that only instances with
were not significant. a low average number of tasks per workstation have
The residuals of the ANOVA did not satisfy normal- an optimal solution that differs from the trivial lower
ity assumptions. Thus, we performed a non-parametric bound.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 17

Table 8. Comparison of optimal solutions for different cycle Finally, and in order to identify the cases in which
times (i.e.ideal average number of tasks per workstation) and parallel stations may improve line efficiency, the optimal
graph characteristics. For each combination of cycle time, column solutions for the SALBP and the PSALBP are compared.
cycle, order strength, column OS, and graph structure, column
graph, the trivial lower bound, column bound, the optimal num- The results show that assembly lines with a small average
ber of workstations for the SALBP, column SALBP, and the optimal number of tasks per workstation may benefit from station
number of production stages for the PSALBP, column PSALBP, are paralleling regardless of other assembly process charac-
reported. We report only the groups in which there are differences teristics. Moreover, instances with large order strengths
between the optimal solutions and the trivial lower bound. (i.e. many precedence relations) also benefit from station
cycle OS Graph bound SALBP PSALBP paralleling. For other production processes, the results
1000 0.2 block 10.80 12.16 9.00 hint at possible efficiency improvements without resort-
chain 10.48 11.72 8.84 ing to parallel stations.
mixed 10.52 12.00 8.68
0.6 block 10.44 12.04 8.28 These results imply that assembly processes with
chain 10.48 11.96 8.00 fewer assembly alternatives and tighter assembly con-
mixed 10.32 11.84 7.72
0.9 mixed 10.40 12.56 6.84 straints (either precedence or cycle time constraints)
1500 0.2 block 7.20 7.56 6.80 benefit the most from improving the process. Such
chain 7.08 7.24 6.88
0.6 block 7.12 7.32 6.72
improvements may come from reengineering the prod-
chain 7.08 7.36 6.64 uct itself (i.e.modifying assembly conditions by alter-
mixed 7.00 7.28 6.56 ing task times and other technological constraints) or
0.9 mixed 7.12 7.64 6.16
2000 0.2 block 5.68 5.76 5.60 improving the production process (increasing process
chain 5.52 5.56 5.48 flexibility through parallel workstations or U-shaped
0.6 block 5.44 5.52 5.32
chain 5.52 5.64 5.24 assembly lines, among other alternatives), and the final
mixed 5.36 5.56 4.96 decision highly depends on the intrinsic conditions of the
0.9 mixed 5.44 5.76 4.92
2500 0.6 block 4.44 4.52 4.36
product and the production process.
chain 4.52 4.64 4.32 This result presents further evidence of the opportuni-
mixed 4.36 4.52 4.12 ties provided by station paralleling. For instance, station
0.9 mixed 4.44 4.64 4.12
3000 0.6 mixed 3.92 3.96 3.88 paralleling is essential when some task times are longer
3500 0.6 block 3.12 3.16 3.08 than the cycle time, but it also helps when the task times
0.9 mixed 3.16 3.20 3.08
5000 0.6 chain 2.52 2.56 2.48 of the tasks are close to the cycle time. Such assem-
mixed 2.36 2.44 2.28 bly processes correspond to difficult-to-divide, elaborate,
0.9 mixed 2.44 2.52 2.36
assembly operations. Here, the number of tasks per work-
station is small and the possible losses due to station
paralleling, specifically the loss of specialisation when
workers perform multiple tasks, is not significant when
6. Conclusions
compared to the efficiency improvements provided by the
In this paper, we consider the effect of station parallel- new assembly considerations. Obviously, there is still a
ing in assembly line efficiency. To study this effect, we trade-off involved in additional equipment costs when
put forward a variant of the classical simple assembly compared to efficiency increases. The potential benefits
line balancing problem, the parallel station assembly line should be especially considered in the mass-production
balancing problem or PSALBP, in which parallel stations of commodity goods where larger production runs help
are allowed, and the aim is to find the minimum num- firms to recover from larger investment costs.
ber of parallel stations required to reach the maximum To conclude, we would like to stress the limitations of
theoretical efficiency of the line. this work as they suggest possible directions for future
In order to solve the problem, a polynomially solvable work:
case is identified and a VNS metaheuristic that integrates
the previous result with different ideas stemming from • The PSALBP minimises the total number of paral-
the SALBP is developed. The metaheuristic is then tested lel workstations; however, in a practical setting, an
in a benchmark set derived from the SALBP and the assembly line with one production stage with three
different characteristics that influence the performance workstations and an assembly line with one worksta-
of the method are ascertained. The VNS turns out to tion is not equivalent to a line configuration with two
be superior to alternative approaches, especially for the production stages with two workstations each. Given
most difficult instances from the instance set. For these the small number of parallel workstations required in
instances, the VNS provides significant improvements by our results, we consider that the above limitation is
reducing the number of required parallel workstations. not essential to the main conclusions of this work but
18 E. ÁLVAREZ-MIRANDA ET AL.
may be relevant in some circumstances. This point is
especially true when tasks are naturally longer than the
cycle times or when the parallel workstations are eval-
uated from an investment standpoint. In both these
cases, a more fine-grained analysis should help to split
parallel workstations along the line.
• The analysis of different cycle times reveals that
line balancing problems only benefit from additional
degrees of freedom to deal with its constraints when
the task times are very large or the precedence rela-
tions are high. Given that most SALBP instances are
easily solved, more attention needs to be drawn to
sources of comparison that apply to hard line balanc-
ing problems.
• This work only considers the application of paral-
lel workstations to assembly lines that comply with
the SALBP assumptions. Given the variety of alter-
native general assembly line formulations, it would
be interesting to ascertain which of these character-
istics modify the problem in order to make worksta-
tion paralleling an option to improve assembly line
efficiency.
• Finally, and from a managerial point of view, there
is an important research gap regarding the expected
benefits from different production process alterna-
tives. U-shaped assembly lines and parallel work-
stations are among the most common methods to
increase the flexibility of a production process, but
their benefits have not been extensively compared
with the scientific literature in terms of efficiency gains
or cost savings.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research has been partially funded by the National Com-
mission for Scientific and Technological Research CONICYT,
Chile, through research grant N. 1191624 ‘Assembly Line Bal-
ancing for Industry 4.0’. E. Álvarez-Miranda also acknowl-
edges the support of the National Commission for Scien-
tific and Technological Research CONICYT, Chile, through
funding from FONDECYT N. 1180670, FONDECYT N.
1191624 and through the Complex Engineering Systems Insti-
tute PIA/BASAL AFB180003.
Notes on contributors
Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda is Associate
Professor of Industrial Engineering, at the
Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de
Talca in Chile. He is also a researcher of
the Complex Systems Engineering Insti-
tute, Chile. He received his PhD in Opera-
tions Research in 2014 from the University
of Bologna, Italy. His research interests are
focused on the development and application of mathematical
optimisation techniques for problems from different applica-
tion contexts.
Sebastián Chace is an Operations Research
M.Sc. candidate and Industrial Engineer-
ing B.Sc. at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. He
currently works at Ernst&Young as Ana-
lytics consultant.
Jordi Pereira is Associate Professor at
the Faculty of Engineering and Science,
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. He
received his PhD in Engineering in 2004
from the Universitat Politècnica de
Catalunya, Spain. His research considers
the development of solution procedures
for combinatorial optimisation problems
in different application areas with special interest in assembly
line balancing problems.
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Appendix. Complexity of partitioning a
production stage
This appendix provides proof to the NP-hard status of the
PSALBP even when the number of workstations equals two
(hence, no more than two production stages are required). The
proof reduces the Partially Ordered Knapsack, POK, which is
known to be NP-complete in the strong sense (Johnson and
Niemi 1983) for the problem under study and follows a similar
proof outlined in Pereira, Ritt, and Vásquez (2018).
A formal definition of the POK (Johnson and Niemi 1983)
follows:
Instance: Given a directed acyclic graph G(V, A ), a weight
w(v) ∈ Z+ +
0 and a value p(v) ∈ Z0 for each vertex v ∈ V, a
knapsack capacity M ∈ Z+ , and a bound m ∈ Z+ .
Question: Isthere a subset V  ⊆ V,closed under predeces-
sors, such that v∈V  w(v) ≤ M and v∈V  p(v) ≥ m?
The POK is NP-complete in the strong sense even if
w(v) = p(v), ∀v ∈ V. In such a case, the problem aims to find
asubset V  ⊆ V closed under predecessors such that m ≤
v∈V  w(v) ≤ M. Also, we limit our attention to the case in

which W = v∈V  w(v) ≥ M. Otherwise, the problem is triv-
ial.
We construct an instance I of the PSALBP as follows: Prece-
dence relations are represented using a directed acyclic graph
G (T, A), where the nodes correspond to the set of tasks T =
V ∪ {α, ω} and the arcs correspond to the relations. Set A con-
tains set A from G(V, A ) as well as an arc from α to each of the
other vertices and an arc from each vertex other than ω to ω.
Each task i ∈ V has a processing time pi equal to w(v). tα and
tω are obtained as follows:
Case i. If W−M = m, then task times are set according
to (A1)
tα = tω = 0. (A1)
Case ii. If W−M > m, then define task times according to (A2)
and (A3).
tα =W − M − m (A2)
tω =0. (A3)
Case iii. If P−W < m, then task times are set according to (A4)
and (A5).
tα = 0 (A4)
tω = m − (W − M). (A5)
The cycle time c is set to tα + M.
We claim that instance I has an optimal solution with 2 pro-
duction stages if and only if there exists a solution to the original
POK instance.
A non-technical overview of the proof follows. Consider
Case i. The solution to the POK instance corresponds to the
tasks assigned to the first production stage of the PSALBP. We
have to ensure that (i) these tasks are closed under precedence,
(ii) the sum of their weights (values) is no larger than M, and
(iii) no smaller than m.
Condition (i) is ensured through the precedence relations
of the PSALBP, while condition (ii) is ensured by the definition
of the cycle time. Condition (iii) follows from the cycle time
constraint imposed on the tasks assigned to stage 2 (the subset
of tasks not assigned to stage 1). Figure 1 visualises that the sum
of the weights of the tasks assigned to stage 2 may be no larger
than c, which forces the sum of the weights of stage 1 to be no
smaller than m. For the other two cases, we increase the task
time of either dummy task α or ω and manipulate c in order to
ensure that the same relationship holds.
Now we proceed with the proof. Converting a feasible POK
into a feasible PSALBP solution with two production stages
and one workstation per production stage is performed as
follows. Given a solution V  ⊆ V to the POK instance, we
assign tasks V  ∪ {α} to the first production stage and V \ V  ∪
{ω} to the second stage. Clearly, the solution complies with
the PSALBP precedence constraints and tα + i∈V  pi ≤ tα +
M = c, hence one workstation is required for the first stage.
In order to show that a single
 workstation is required for
the second stage, note that i∈V  ti + i∈V\V  ti = W and,

according to the feasibility of the POK solution i∈V  ti ≥ m.
Consequently, (A6) holds.

ti ≤ W − m (A6)
i∈V\V 
Now we consider each case separately.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH 21

Case i. The relation that defines the case is W−M = m, by

substitution from (A6), we get (A7).

ti ≤ W − m = M = c (A7)
i∈V\V 

Case ii. The condition that defines the case can be rewritten
as (A8).
c = tα + M = (W − M − m) + M = W − m (A8) Figure A1. Outline of relationships among m, M, W and c. The
central line locates the values within the real line. The range of
Consequently, replacing (A8) in (A6) leads to (A7). feasible workloads for the first and second production stage are
 Case iii. The workload of the second stage is (A9) also represented.
i∈V\V  ti + tω .
   
ti + tω = ti + m − (W − M) (A9) Case i. i∈V\V  ti ≤ c = M holds. Substitute in i∈V  ti +

i∈V\V  i∈V\V  i∈V\V  ti = W to obtain (A10) which proves the result.
Replacing (A6) into (A9), we reach the conclusion that the 
ti ≥ P − W = m (A10)
total workload of the second stage is no larger than (W −
i∈V 
m) + (m − W + M) = M, showing that only one workstation 
is required. Case ii. i∈V\V  ti ≤ c = tα + M holds. By definition of tα ,

To show that a feasible PSALBP solution with two produc- see
 (A2), we get (A11). Now replace  in W = i∈V  ti +
tion stages and one workstation per production stage is feasible i∈V\V  ti to get the desired result, i.e. i∈V  ti ≥ m.
for the POK, we proceed as follows. In such a solution to the 
PSALBP, the first stage contains task α and a subset V  of tasks ti ≤ (W − M − m) + M (A11)
from V closed
 under precedence relations with total processing i∈V\V 
time tα + i∈V  ti ≤ c which implies  i∈V  ti ≤ M. Conse- 
quently, it only remains to show that i∈V  ti ≥ m holds. Each Case iii. i∈V\V  ti + tω ≤ c = M holds. Replacing tω = m −
  
case is considered separately. W + M and P = i∈V  ti + i∈V\V  ti , we get i∈V ti ≥ m.
This concludes the proof.