Solving Assembly Line Balancing Problem Based On Improved Ant Colony Algorithm

Assembly line is an important production mode for modern manufacturing to assemble the parts of products,and assembly line balancing problem is a mixed integer programming problem that allocates the operations with priority relationship to each station,so that some objectives of the assembly line can reach the optimal.The study of assembly line balance is conducive to improve the production speed of enterprises,so that the profitability of enterprises is greatly improved.Because assembly line balancing is closely related to actual production,there are many kinds of assembly line balancing.The layout of assembly line is linear,bilateral and U-shaped,and the actual production goals include the first kind of balance goal(minimizing workstation),the second kind of balance goal(minimizing beat)and the third kind of balance goal(minimizing balance index).For a long time,the assembly line balancing problem has not been well solved;until the rise of meta heuristic algorithm,the assembly line problem has been more unified and effective solution.The research object of this paper is the assembly line whose layout is linear and the balance goal is to minimize the beat.Based on the idea of ant colony algorithm,an improved ant colony algorithm for assembly line balancing problem is proposed.(1)The basic attributes(operation time)and priority attributes(subsequent operands and releasable operands)of operations are used as heuristic information to search feasible solutions.(2)A new pheromone is proposed.This pheromone updating mechanism is simple and practical,which is helpful to reduce the load balance of assembly line solution.(3)Two kinds of operators,operation selection operator and operation assignment operator,are given,which can assign operations one by one.Operation selection operator can search candidate operations globally according to pheromone and heuristic value.Operation assignment operator decides which candidate operation to assign according to theoretical station time.The experimental results show that the algorithm can effectively solve the second kind of assembly line balancing problem.Finally,some statistical analysis experiments are carried out on the improved ant colony algorithm:(1)compared with other intelligent algorithms,analysis of these algorithms can get the best beat,so as to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the algorithm;(2)In the contrast experiment of pheromone between operation and operation and pheromone between operation and station,the balance rate and load balance degree of the best solution obtained by the two pheromones are compared;(3)Taking the average beat as the comparison parameter,the influence of various heuristic information on the initial feasible solution of the assembly line is analyzed to verify the effectiveness of the heuristic information.