A logistic game for the assembly line balancing problem

The assembly line balancing is a very critical problem in several manufacturing systems. It consists of partitioning the assembly work of a standardized product (or a set of different models of products) among a sequence of workstations (the assembly line). The paper deals with the development of a logistic game for the implementation of original models and methods (priority-based hierarchical heuristics) to support the assembly line production in the automotive industry. In particular the application of the proposed educational game to the case of small quantity not standardized production, such as the sport cars production, is illustrated. The application to the automotive industry enlightens the most important constraints due to product complexity (more than 400 assembly tasks are involved) and variability. This study discusses the main results obtained by some competitions proposed to a Summer School of Ph.D. students and to undergraduate university courses.