In-line kitting for part feeding of assembly lines: workload balancing and storage assignment to reduce the workers’ walking effort

Stefan Fedtke (), Nils Boysen () and Patrick Schumacher ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Fedtke: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Lehrstuhl für Operations Management
Nils Boysen: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena Lehrstuhl für Operations Management
Patrick Schumacher: Technische Universität Braunschweig Lehrstuhl für Produktion und Logistik

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, 2023, vol. 45, issue 3, No 1, 717-758

Abstract: Abstract An efficient part feeding is among the top challenges of many mass producers applying mixed-model assembly lines, for instance, in the automotive industry. This paper introduces a novel part feeding policy applied by a large German assembly plant for car engines: In-line kitting. Under this policy, the first stations of the line do not execute assembly operations, but are reserved for picking parts while passing containers of stock-keeping units (SKUs) arranged along the line. In this way, the parts are collected in traveling kits moving along with each workpiece on the conveyor, so that later assembly stations have the required parts directly available and do not lose precious labor time for unproductive parts handling. A major operational challenge when applying this part feeding policy is the walking effort for the human pickers while putting the SKUs of their respective stations into the traveling kits of the passing workpieces. Due to a high product variety, a large number of comparatively bulky SKU containers have to fit into each station, so that the walking distance to be covered by a worker during a work shift exceeds multiple kilometers. We show that this physical burden can be reduced significantly by balancing the workload among stations and optimizing the storage assignment of SKU containers within each in-line kitting station. We formulate the resulting optimization problem and provide suited solution procedures. Our computational study shows that the walking distance of pickers can be reduced significantly without producing any additional costs.

Keywords: Mixed-model assembly lines; Part feeding; In-line kitting; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00291-023-00723-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:orspec:v:45:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s00291-023-00723-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... research/journal/291

DOI: 10.1007/s00291-023-00723-1

Access Statistics for this article

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management is currently edited by Rainer Kolisch

More articles in OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management from Springer, Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().