Solving Multi-manned Assembly Line Balancing Problem by a Heuristic-mixed Genetic Algorithm

Assembly line balancing (ALB) is a well-known manufacturing optimization problem that has received intensive studies over decades. However, few researches have taken into account the possibility that more than one worker is allowed to work in the same workstation simultaneously and independently. Potential benefits result from multi-manning are considerable. Meanwhile, the intrinsic twofold complexities of not only assigning tasks but also deciding number of workers in workstations make the original NP-hard problem even more difficult to deal with. In this paper, a heuristic-mixed genetic algorithm is proposed. The algorithm creatively integrates a heuristic method during the decoding procedure so that solving multi-manned assembly line balancing (mALB) problem becomes tractable. Numerical experiments are presented and results show that the algorithm is useful and efficient.