Simple and U-type assembly line balancing by using an ant colony based algorithm (Q1011897)

Summary: An Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based heuristic algorithm is proposed for solving simple (straight line) and U-shaped assembly line balancing problems (ALBP). The paper makes one of the first attempts to show how ACO heuristic can be used to solve U-shaped ALBP. A new algorithm is proposed in this paper that seamlessly integrates COMSOAL algorithm, Ranked Positional Weight Heuristic (RPWH) and an ACO based heuristic in order to obtain good solutions to simple and U-shaped ALBPs. The result of the computational study has shown that the proposed algorithm is effective in solving simple/U-shaped line balancing problems.