This work deals with a robust optimisation of production lines at the design stage. The design of such lines can be interpreted as an optimisation problem that consists in finding a configuration optimising individual objectives and respecting technological and economic constraints. We conside rtwo types of production lines: assembly and transfer lines. The first one can be represented as a set of linearly ordered stations where the tasks are executed sequentially. The second one is composed of transfer machines, including several multispindle heads. All tasks within a single head are executed simultaneously, while tools on a machine work in a sequential mode. We describe different approaches for modelling the uncertainty of data in line balancing problems. Our objective is to identify the approaches that best fit the context of the design. In particular, the attention concentrates on the robust approach. We propose a new optimisation criterion based on the stability radius of a feasible solution. Then, robust formulations are presented for the design of the assembly and transfer lines under variations of task processing times. We also develop heuristic methods whose results are used to improve mathematical models. Finally, a new hybrid resolution method is elaborated to solve different variants of the stability radius maximisation.