Essay length: 2000 words excluding references and appendix.
Question 1 (50%; word limit 1000 with reasonable flexibility):
Line Balancing is a classic, well-researched Operations Management/Research
problem of significant industrial importance, for which various methods have been
introduced in the subject literature. Your task is to solve the problem below.
Suppose a production line performs 20 tasks. The task operation times and their
precedence relationships are given in the Table 1. The target workstation (WS) cycle
time is 1. You are required to determine the number of workstations and the
assignment of the tasks by applying the longest-task-time heuristic (LTT) and the
Ranked Positional Weights method (RPW) respectively. You need to explain the
solution procedures with appropriate diagrams, calculations and tables; and contrast
the results of LTT and RPW. Finally, discuss the line balancing methods in a broader
context.
Table 1. Description of the tasks, time and precedence relationships
Task number Task time Preceding tasks
Task 1 0.46 –
Task 2 0.42 –
Task 3 0.35 –
Task 4 0.17 –
Task 5 0.40 –
Task 6 0.60 –
Task 7 0.18 –
Task 8 0.15 –
Task 9 0.36 –
Task 10 0.12 2,1
Task 11 0.23 3
Task 12 0.43 6,5,4
Task 13 0.20 7
Task 14 0.60 8
Task 15 0.56 11,10,9
Task 16 0.40 13,12
Task 17 0.41 14
Task 18 0.46 15
Task 19 0.47 17,16
Task 20 0.50 19,18
1
Question 2 (50%; word limit 1000~1300):
Explain the concepts of Kanban control and Reorder point. Discuss their
relationships and their applicability in practices. Support your arguments with
appropriate literature.