Heuristics for Mixed Model Assembly Line Balancing Problem with Sequencing

Abstract

The growing global competition compels organizations to use many productivity improvement techniques. In this direction, assembly line balancing helps an organization to design its assembly line such that its balancing efficiency is maximized. If the organization assembles more than one model in the same line, then the objective is to maximize the average balancing efficiency of the models of the mixed model assembly line balancing problem. Maximization of average balancing efficiency of the models along with minimization of makespan of sequencing models forms a multi-objective function. This is a realistic objective function which combines the balancing efficiency and makespan. This assembly line balancing problem with multi-objective comes under combinatorial category. Hence, development of meta-heuristic is inevitable. In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop three genetic algorithms for the mixed model assembly line balancing problem such that the average balancing efficiency of the model is maximized and the makespan of sequencing the models is minimized. Finally, these three algorithms and another algorithm in literature modified to solve the mixed-model assembly line balancing problem are compared in terms of the stated multi-objective function using a randomly generated set of problems through a complete factorial experiment.