NTIGen: A Software for Generating Nissan Based Instances for Time and Space Assembly Line Balancing

The time and space assembly line balancing problem (TSALBP) is a realistic multiobjective version of assembly line balancing industrial problems involving the joint optimization of conflicting criteria such as the cycle time, the number of stations, and the area of these stations. For this family of problems there is not any repository where researchers and practitioners can obtain realistic problem instances also containing information on mixed products plans. In this contribution we introduce a new TSALBP instance software generator that can produce problem instances having industrial real-like features. This generator is called NTIGen (Nissan TSALBP Instance GENerator) since it is developed from the information and real data of the assembly line and production planning of the Nissan plant of Barcelona. The NTIGen software as well as some benchmark instances are publicly available on Internet and could be used by researchers to carry out general TSALBP experiments and to also discriminate between different assembly line configurations when future demand conditions vary.