What is line balancing?

Production line balancing is the process of dividing assembly line tasks equally across workstations and resources to reduce idle or overburdened worker time and to thereby improve productivity.

Use line balancing to:

• Improve the quota of assembly lines by reducing bottle necks between tasks.

• Continuously eliminate waste from operations and processes.

• Reduce production time by assigning workstation operations, processes, and workers for maximum efficiency, based upon quotas as well as fluctuations in customer demand.

Line balancing solutions often rely upon minimizing the cycle time between workstations, minimizing the number of required stations, optimizing the allocation of workers at each station, and improving tools. In the following example, too much production moving to the first workstation creates a bottle neck that countermands the cycle time flow represented by the black line in the background. The impact of a backup at the first workstation is passed to the second and then to the third workstation, resulting in unbalanced lines and steadily decreasing productivity. Workers at the second and third stations are able to quickly complete their operations and processes, but do not receive production fast enough from the first station. The third station is more efficient than the second, probably due to the presence of an additional worker.

By shifting a worker from the third to the first workstation and moving work operations and processes to less-strained worker resources, you can improve lag time where the problem started, remove the bottle neck, and balance throughput.

Other line balancing solutions may include:

• Moving operations and processes that contain sequential operations, indicated respectively as blocks and blocks with a dark bar or diagonal white bar in the chart, between stations and workers.

• Optimizing the efficiency and use of labor by constraining the process and order of operations and processes.

• Reducing nonvalue-added activities and operational expenses.