A review of the A400m final assembly line balancing methodology

Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) comprises ordering of tasks among workstations to satisfy precedence constraints and objective functions. However, due to the specific features of an aeronautical Final Assembly Line (FAL), such approach is not fully suitable. In a FAL, the number of workstations relates to technological criteria rather than to a calculation aiming to minimize the total number of stations. To improve current practices, a methodological approach was taken to address the conceptual modeling of an assembly line, reviewing state of the art balancing techniques and the methodology used in the AIRBUS A400M FAL.