Abstract:This paper presents a simple and U-shaped assembly line balance problem with the modified ranked positional weight technique. First, according to the processing time and priority relationship of each task, the synthetical ranked positional weight is obtained by taking the time-ranked weight and position-ranked weight into comprehensive consideration. Then the modified ranked positional weight technique is applied to the assembly line balance problem to obtain the balancing results of simple, single U-shaped and double U-shaped assembly lines. With the simple example 1, the comparison of the balance effects is performed in modified ranked positional weight technique and branch-and-bound method. With the experimental example 2, it is proved that the balance effect of modified ranked positional weight technique is better than that of the time-ranked weight technique. Therefore, the modified ranked positional weight technique is an effective method to solve assembly line balance problem.