Workforce planning and assignment in mixed-model assembly lines as a factor of line reconfigurability: state of the art

摘要

In today’s global competition, manufacturing systems must become more and more flexible and reconfigurable to respond quickly and efficiently to market demand changes. Contrarily to machines, humans are agile and able to work with different equipment in different conditions. Consequently, employment of human workers leads to more flexible and more easily reconfigurable lines. Rich existing studies on workforce planning and scheduling in mixed-model assembly lines (MMAL) have motivated us to investigate such methods with the goal to see how they can be used to increase line reconfigurability. In this paper, a survey of workforce assignment models for MMALs of different layouts and of possible strategies for line reconfigurations via workforce reassignment is presented.