Two-sided assembly line balancing with preemptive multiple goals using an evolutionary algorithm

This paper considers two-sided assembly line balancing with preemptive multiple goals. In the problem, three goals are taken into account in the following priority order:minimizing the number of mated-stations, achieving the goal level of workload smoothness, and maximizing the work relatedness. An evolutionary algorithm is used to solve the multiple goal problems. A new structure is presented in the algorithm, which is helpful to searching the solution satisfying the goals in the order of the priority. The proper evolutionary components such as encoding and decoding method, evaluation scheme, and genetic operators, which are specific to the problem being solved, are designed in order to improve the algorithm's performance. The computational results show that the proposed algorithm is promising in the solution quality.