Electromagnetism-Like Mechanism Algorithm For Stochastic Assembly Line Balancing With Reliability Constant

摘要

This paper deals with the assembly line balancing problem with independent stochastic operation times. The problem consists of assigning operations to a given number of workstations in order to minimize the cycle time while all precedence constraints between operations are met and the probability of exceeding the cycle time is smaller than a given ratio. A new electromagnetism-like mechanism (EM) algorithm is proposed to solve the line balancing problem. EM simulates the electromagnetism theory by considering each solution as an electrical charge. Through the attraction-repulsion of the charges, solutions move to the optimality. The numerical results are compared with those of simulation annealing (SA) and EM show better performance of SA for this kind of problem.