Novel cellular automata algorithm for assembly line balancing problem of type-2

Simple assembly line balancing problem with the objective of minimizing production cycle time called SALBP-2 usually is widely applied in automotive and electronic manufacturing production lines. In this paper a novel algorithm for solving SALBP-2 is proposed based on cellular automata (CA), which has the potentiality of solving time, space or parameter discrete optimization problems. Three types of CA model are presented to implement the evolution rules, shift and swap. All of them are coded in MATLAB, and their efficiencies are tested on benchmarks. Also a comparison study is made with other publications. Test and comparison results show that the novel cellular automata algorithm can get good results for SALBP-2.