A new look at the bowl phenomenon

Abstract

An interesting empirical result in the assembly line literature states that slightly unbalanced assembly lines (in the format of a bowl – with central stations less loaded than the external ones) present higher throughputs than perfectly balanced ones. This effect is known as the bowl phenomenon. In this study, we analyze the presence of this phenomenon in assembly lines with integer task times. For this purpose, we modify existing models for the simple assembly line balancing problem and assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem in order to generate configurations exhibiting the desired format. These configurations are implemented in a stochastic simulation model, which is run f..