Operator assignment problem in aircraft assembly lines: a new planning approach taking into account economic and ergonomic constraints

Abstract

The assembly process is extremely complex for aircraft and its management requires to address numerous optimization problems related to the assignment of tasks to workstations, staffing problem for each workstation and finally the assignment of tasks to operators at each workstation. This paper treats the latter problem dealing with the assignment of tasks to operators under ergonomic constraints. The problem of optimal tasks scheduling in aircraft assembly line is modelled as Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP). The objective of this research is to assign tasks to operators and to find an optimal schedule of task processing under economic and ergonomic constraints. Two different models to solve this problem are presented and evaluated on an industrial case study.