Balancing parallel two-sided assembly lines with ant colony optimisation algorithm

Abstract

Assembly lines are one of the most frequently used flow oriented production systems in industry. Although only a few researchers have studied them, two-sided assembly lines are usually utilised to produce high-volume large-sized products such as trucks and buses. In this study, more than one two-sided assembly line constructed in parallel are balanced simultaneously using a newly developed ant colony optimisation algorithm. To the best knowledge of the authors, the proposed method is the first attempt to solve the parallel two-sided assembly line balancing problem using an ant colony optimisation based algorithm. The proposed approach is also illustrated with examples from the literature to show the procedures of the algorithm.