The Search for Assembly Line Balance Oriented on the Allocation of Quality Control Points

In the paper important aspects of the proper use of quality inspection in production process were presented. The paper deals with the problem of assembly line balance analysis taking into account occurrence of quality checkpoints. It is very important for producers, because the earlier the detection of a defect, the greater the possibility of reducing the costs of manufacturing a faulty product. In order to present the real assembly line balancing problem taking into account occurrence of checkpoints in strictly defined places, simplified process of USB flash drive production was analyzed. The assembly line balancing was performed and the indicators evaluating quality of the solutions were obtained. The calculations were made for different conditions regarding the type and location of quality inspections. Approaches like classical assembly line balancing without and with quality inspection, and fragmentary assembly line balancing with quality inspection were verified. All results and discussion are presented in the paper.