I. INTRODUCTION

Assembly line defines that manufacturing technique in

which a product is carried by some form of mechanized

conveyor among stations at which the various

operations necessary to its assembly are performed. It is

used to assemble quickly large numbers of a uniform

product. Originally, assembly lines were developed for

a cost efficient mass production of standardized

products, designed to exploit a high specialization of

labour and the associated learning effects .In the

another hand when we used assembly line balancing

(ALB) this makes efficient flow-line systems available

for low volume assembly-to-order production and

enables modern production strategies like mass

customization. This in turn ensures that the thorough

planning and Implementation of assembly systems will

remain of high practical relevance in the foreseeable

future and also assembly line balancing problem

involves an assignment of various tasks to the

workstations, while optimizing one or more objectives

without violating restrictions imposed on the line.

Various objectives are considered in 2ALB problems.

In practice, it is often desirable to smooth out the

workload assignments, and assign related tasks to the

same workstation if possible.

Line Balancing involves selecting the appropriate combination/grouping of work tasks to be performed at each workstation so that the work is completed in a feasible sequence (i.e., making standardized products sequentially step-by-step along the line of flow) within an acceptable cycle time and that the work is evenly divided among the workstations/workers (i.e., each workstation has approximately the same amount of work).

Assembly Line balancing (ALB) is an attractive means for optimal balancing of the assembly lines/flow lines in Mass production and Continuous / repetitive production systems (Large-scale Serial production system).

Assembly line balancing is common for Flow oriented production systems. Can be used for all of single model (mass production), multi model (batch production) and mixed model production systems. And again ALB can be used for both of automated and manual lines. 

Read more in the attachment.

Article Assembly line balancing: Which model to use when?

Assembly line balancing is to know how tasks are to be assigned to workstations, so that the predetermined goals are achieved. Minimization of the number of workstations and maximization of the production rate are the most common goals. The main objective of line balancing is to distribute the task evenly over the work station so that idle time of man of machine can be minimized. Lime balancing aims at grouping the facilities or workers in an efficient pattern in order to obtain an optimum or most efficient balance of the capacities of production, and flows of the production or assembly processes.

Single-Model Assembly lines were used in high level production of a single product.

Mixed Model Assembly Line model is the set-up time between the models would be decreased sufficiently and enough to be ignored.   

Multi Model Assembly Line models the uniformity of the assembled products and the production system is not that much sufficient to accept the enabling of the product and the production levels.

Hello, for me Assembly Line Balancing is required for fully connceted workstations either manually or fully automated stations. For the conncection  with other production lines you have to look on the basic production principle you has choosen, push or pull principle or some other kinds of production flow.

Assembly line balancing is mostly suitable in mass production conditions. Similar and repeated activities are grouped into workstations. Further workstations are balanced to have same cycle times. 

The assembly line balancing concept is is generally used for mass production. However this can also be applicable in the case of batch production. This concept was first used by Toyota Production System, Japan. 

Do not forget the U-shaped production cells...

Pujo P, El-Khabous I and Ounnar F. 2015. Experimental assessment of the productivity improvement when using U-shaped production cells with variable takt time International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, 6, 17-38

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01201817

mass production, manual assembly line.

Mass production respecting sequence and different times for each operation