Application of branch and bound method in divided line balancing problem

In large scale problems of line balancing, a weak point is to spend a huge effort of calculation when branch and bound method is adopted to solve the problem. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the method which can seek the satisfactory solution by splitting the problem into some partitions. First, the whole problem is divided into several partial problems, the optimal line balancing is investigated in each partial problem, and the results in all partial problems are joined together to get a trial solution for the whole problem. Second, the trial solution is improved by line re-balancing in the joint area of partial problems to search for a satisfactory solution. Furthermore, a computer is used to obtain the satisfactory solution and the result is compared with the result of a conventional method to investigate the efficiency of this proposed method.