Evolutionary Approach to Design Assembly Lines

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the main problems concerning the design of assembly lines. It is composed of the following steps: (1) input data preparation (2) elaboration of the logical layout of the line, which consists in the distribution of operations among stations along the line and an assignment of resources to the different stations and (3) finally the mapping phase, allowing to check the results with a commercial simulation package. This work presents a new method to tackle the hybrid assembly lines dealing with multiple objective. The goal is to minimize the total cost of the line by integrating design (congestion, machine cost,...) and operation issues (cycle time, precedence constraints, availability,...). After an overview of the current work in this area, this paper presents, in detail, a very promising approach to solve multiple objective problems: a multiple objective grouping genetic algorithm (a grouping genetic algorithm hybridized with the multi-criteria decision-aid method PROMETHEE II). An approach to deal with user’s preferences in design problems is also introduced. The essential concepts adopted by the method are described. An application of the proposed method to an industrial case study is presented.KeywordsAssembly lines designmultiple objective problemsgrouping genetic algorithmmulti-criteria decision-aid