Research On The Robotic Two-sided Assembly Line Balancing Problem With Setup Times

In recent years,with the development of robotic technology in modern industry,more and more robots have been applied to the assembly line,achieving a highly automated assembly line and making the assembly line more flexible.Two-sided assembly lines are widely used in automobile and other manufacturing enterprises because of their advantages of shortening the length of the line,reducing the assembly time and improving the sharing rate of tools.On the one hand,using robots to assemble products can replace operators to assemble in dangerous or possibly harmful environments of health.On the other hand,using robots can reduce labor costs,improve assembly quality,and facilitate the realization of intelligent upgrades of the assembly line.Two-sided assembly line balance is for the collaborative optimization of mated-stations and the assembly line.The balance technology is very complicated.The robotic two-sided assembly line balance will consider the coordination of robot operation times and task times and balance problem of products on the assembly line.In addition,with the consideration of robot and tool setup times,the robotic two-sided assembly line balancing problem is more complicated.For the robotic two-sided assembly line balancing problem,this paper considers two setup times at the same time,one is the sequence-dependent setup time(changing tools,etc.),and the other is the robot setup time(setting the robot parameters).This paper collects and organizes related literature on the assembly line,two-sided assembly line and robotic two-sided assembly line balancing problem,and summarizes the research status domestic and abroad;introduces the basic concepts and balance theory of related problems;establishes the mathematical model for the robotic two-sided assebly line balancing problem with the objective of minimizing the cycle time;proposes a heuristic algorithm based on the synthesis ranked positional weight value rule,and a cycle time update mechanism is given;combined with the benchmark instances of the two-sided assembly line,the task times of the benchmark instances are adjusted by considering the setup times.Besides,the setup times are divided into low and high two variabilities,and the robotic two-sided assembly line balancing problem under 16 different scenarios is tested.Different scale problems will affect the stability of the algorithm.When the scale of the problem is larger,the deviation of the result will be larger.For two levels of setup time,the algorithm is more stable under high setup time.The longer the algorithm runs,the more optimal solutions can be searched,and the smaller the cycle time will be obtained.The aboved conclusions verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the model and algorithm,and indicate that the heuristic algorithm successfully solves the robotic two-sided assembly line balancing problem.