An Imperialist Competitive Algorithm for Simultaneous Solving of Balancing and Sequencing Problems in Mixed-Model Assembly Lines

Mixed-Model Assembly Line (MMAL) is one of the modern approaches of Just-In-Time (JIT) systems. Many researchers have solved balancing and sequencing problems in MMAL, but few of them have considered the problems simultaneously. This paper presents a new Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to provide the exact solution of simultaneous solving. Because of NP-hardness, an Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) is applied and compared to the recent developed algorithm, Co-evolutionary Genetic Algorithm (Co-GA), in the literature minimizing total utility work. To strengthen the search process in ICA, two major hypotheses namely simultaneous search and feasible search are included contrasting Co-GA. Numerical results show that ICA has superior performance in comparison with Co-GA regarding quality of solution and time consuming