Variant flexibility in assembly line balancing under the premise of feasibility robustness

The final assembly of vehicles is frequently designed as a mixed model line which produces effectively at a fixed ratio of variants. Market forecasts indicate a volatile future demand for different types of vehicles such as electrified vehicles. The resulting uncertainty of demand affects the task of line balancing assembly lines. This paper presents a new planning method to provide decision support for line balancing with inherent variant flexibility while maintaining feasibility robustness. Therefore a combined approach of scenario analyses and line balancing optimization is developed. This approach is applied to a use case in automotive industry.