A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Assembly Line Balancing

This paper presents a hybrid genetic algorithm for the simple assembly line problem, SALBP-1. The chromosome representation of the problem is based on random keys. The assignment of the operations to the workstations is based on a heuristic priority rule in which the priorities of the operations are defined by the chromosomes. A local search is used to improve the solution. The approach is tested on a set of problems taken from the literature and compared with other approaches. The computation results validate the effectiveness of the algorithm.