Investigating the Effect of Production Line Balancing on Throughput in an Automotive Components Assembly Plant in Lagos State

This research investigates the effect of assembly line balancing interventions on throughput performance at an automotive components assembly plant in Lagos State, South West Nigeria. Assembly line balancing is a classical industrial engineering problem with well-established solution methods; however, its application in the Nigerian automotive components industry, which faces unique challenges of mixed-model production and high operator skill variability, is inadequately represented in the regional literature. This study employs a combined analytical and simulation-based research design. Current-state line analysis quantifies workstation idle time, cycle time variation, and line efficiency using time study data collected from one hundred and twenty assembly cycles per workstation. Three rebalancing scenarios are developed using the ranked positional weights heuristic, the Kilbridge-Wester column method, and a simulated annealing algorithm. Each scenario is evaluated using a discrete-event simulation model developed in AnyLogic software and validated against observed production data. Results demonstrate that the simulated annealing-derived solution achieves the highest line efficiency of eighty-six-point-three percent, compared to seventy-one-point-four percent for the current configuration, representing a projected throughput increase of twenty-one percent at unchanged staffing levels. Keywords: assembly line balancing, automotive components, discrete-event simulation, throughput, Lagos State