An Ant Colony Algorithm For Hybrid Assembly Sequence Planning And Assembly Line Balancing

Assembly sequence planning and Assembly line balancing in modern manufacturing system plays an important role in product design, assembly is an important part in production and manufacturing, which is to assembled the parts according to the requirements of technical regulations and process, and the assembly line is a kind of the assembly manufacturing system which is widely adopted in a production mode. In the process of assembly sequence planning, we should design the sequence of various parts on assembly, and assess the feasibility and efficiency of the designed assembly sequence. In the process of assembly line balancing, we should solve the optimization of the multi-objective problem, which refer to the assembly operation time, the load rate of workstations and the operation time between the workstations.It will directly affect the production efficiency and product quality of the assembly manufacturing system that a good assembly sequence and a reasonable layout of the assembly line. Assembly sequence planning and assembly line balancing problems are both the typical NP-hard problem. Because of the complexity of the problem, the scholars have tried to use artificial intelligent algorithm to solve the two problems in recent years. Among them, the ant colony algorithm, which is the simulation of the ants foraging behavior in the ecosystem, is gradually attented by the researchers. Ant Colony which has the characteristics of a kind of swarm intelligence provides a new way to solve the problem of parallel hybrid optimization the two NP problems.In this paper, the ant colony algorithm is used to solve the hybrid assembly sequence planning and assembly line balancing problem. In the hybrid problem, the transform number of the assembly tools and the assembly directions for assembly sequence problem should transform into the assembly time on the assembly line, and the problem of carrying the mechanical heavy assembly parts should be considered. Then, through the extraction of the parts information, we should reverse the disassembly liaison graph to obtain the assembly liaison graph and the assembly task priority graph. In view of new optimization objectives and constraint conditions of the hybird problem, the mathematical model of a hybrid optimization problem is established and the ant colony algorithm is improved to solve mathematical problems.In this paper, the model and the solving method is applied to the case, the assembly line task allocation was carried out, to get the implementation feasible layout of assembly operations, and the task sequence on the various workstations. Finally, the conclusion of the ant colony algorithm will be compared with the results obtained by other papers, then we should compare the different results of total assembly time, assembly work time balance, the load degree of workstations, the transformation of the assembly tools, the transformation of the assembly directions and so on, and expounds the advantages and disadvantages of the algorithm.