Assembly lines with disabled workers: new chalenges and approaches

• Grant number: 09/07812-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: August 01, 2009
• End date: July 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Production Engineering - Operational Research
• Principal Investigator: Alysson Machado Costa
• Grantee: Alysson Machado Costa
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Disabled workers are usually excluded from the work market. This is particularly true in developing countries, where the percentage of active disabled workers is minimal. The reasons for this fact are complex and include prejudice and misinformation. In fact, the main goal of this project is to show that, with a good planning, disabled workers can be as efficient as any other worker in competitive productive contexts. We intend to reach this goal through six different sub-research lines, which include the development of good (approximate and exact) solution methods for the planning of assembly lines with disabled workers. Moreover, we will study variants of the problem in order to face the challenges found in practice. (AU)