A stepped approach to support preassembly tasks assignment in bus production

This paper proposes a structured approach to assign operations related to material and subassembly preparation before line assembly, to a group of multiskilled operators. It first characterizes the preparation tasks and their compatibility with the skill level of operators. Then, it formulates and solves the corresponding assignment problem. In case of infeasibility or not optimal solutions, the approach permits also to identify appropriate training measures in order to minimize the number of involved operators or maximize the number of assigned preparation tasks. This approach is the outcome of an action research case study which dealt with a bus assembly line. The results showed that the approach was relatively easy to implement and effectively led some crucial decisions which were mostly experience-based and not made in a structured manner.