Production line balancing ensures that there is no build up in the inventory in a line. It also helps to identify bottlenecks in operation and ways of balancing the activity. It is easier to balance an assembly line operation than a machining operation.

The smallest unit of productive work is called a work element. Each workstation (or operator) is assigned one or more work elements. Line balancing ensures that all operators in an assembly line will be busy for nearly the same time. The longest workstation time is termed the cycle time.

TMSS-Online will use any of the following techniques to determine the optium production line settings:

1. balance delay (D);
2. COMSOAL;
3. ranked positional weight heuristic, and;
4. multi-model and mixed-model assembly line methods