Optical burst switching (OBS) aims at combining the strengths of packet and circuit switching and is considered as a promising technology for implementing the next generation optical Internet, required to cope with the rapid growth of Internet traffic and the increased deployment of new services. In this paper, an optimal burst assembly approach employing traffic shaping (OBATS) for OBS networks has been proposed in order to improve network performance in terms of reduced blocking probability, congestion control and better utilization of bandwidth. Particularly, the proposed scheme aims at reducing the average delay experienced by the packets during the burstification process in optical burst switched (OBS) networks, for a given average size of the bursts produced. Reducing the packet burstification delay, for a given average burst size, is essential for real-time applications; correspondingly, increasing the average burst size for a given packet burstification delay is important for reducing the number of bursts injected into the network and the associated overhead imposed on the core nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed burst assembly approach gives better network performance in terms of burst drop, resource contention and delay as compared to conventional burst assembly approaches.