Hindawi

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Volume 2022, Article ID 9954518, 8 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/9954518

Research Article
A Heuristic-Mixed Genetic Algorithm for Type II Assembly Line
Balancing with Multiple Workers in Workstations

Xiongwen Qian
School of Urban Transportation and Logistics, Shenzhen Technology University, Guangdong, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Xiongwen Qian; qianxiongwen@sztu.edu.cn

Received 6 December 2021; Accepted 2 February 2022; Published 27 March 2022

Academic Editor: Antonio M. Lopes

Copyright © 2022 Xiongwen Qian. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

A type II line balancing problem with multiple workers in workstations (mALBP-II) is considered given a total number of
workers, group workers, and tasks into workstations so as to minimize cycle time. Different from the manufacturing environment
where the traditional assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) rises, manual or semimanual manufacturing enjoys much higher
flexibility allowing multiple workers to perform the same set of tasks on workpieces in the same workstation in parallel. The
freedom of specifying the number of workers in workstations makes the classic NP-hard ALBP even harder to solve. A heuristic-
mixed genetic algorithm (hGA) is therefore proposed to solve the problem. The algorithm minimizes cycle time as its first
objective and balances workload among workstations as its second objective. A maximum-utilization heuristic and a bisection
search are integrated into the decoding process of hGA so that the optimization of task assignment and worker allocation is
accomplished simultaneously. Numerical results and a real-life application demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of hGA.

1. Introduction products with no special requirement on equipment, mul-

The Assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) is a well-
known optimization problem in manufacturing engineering.
Production organized by assembly line is first divided into
elementary tasks, which are then assigned to a sequence of
workstations connected by a material handling device, e.g., a
conveyor. A product (workpiece) starts its assembly from the
first workstation and goes through workstations one by one
before its manufacturing completes in the last workstation.
The duration (cycle time) of each workpiece staying in each
workstation is equal. ALBP aims to assign indivisible tasks to
workstations so as to optimize certain assembly line per-
formance metrics, such as cycle time or the total number of
workstations, with the constraints of task precedence rela-
tionship and workstation capacity. As a variant of the classic
bin packing problem, ALBP is NP-hard as well [1].
The classic ALBP assumes that each workstation is
operated by only one worker; the capacity of one work-
station does not depend on the number of workers but on
the automatic equipment. However, in manual or semi-
manual manufacturing which produces small-sized
tiple workers are possible to work in one workstation,
performing the same set of tasks on workpieces in parallel.
Workers can be seated along the conveyor, taking work-
pieces off the conveyor and working on them; after the
workpieces get processed, they will be put back on the
conveyor and transferred to the next workstation. Compared
to single-manned workstations, multimanned stations help
to achieve higher utilization (less workstation idle time),
facilitate a higher production rate (shorter cycle time), and
improve the reliability of the entire assembly line. For ex-
ample, suppose one workstation is assigned a task with a
duration of 90 seconds, but the required cycle time is 60
seconds. To meet the required cycle time, the workstation
has to be assigned at least two workers, so each worker has in
fact twice the cycle time to complete the task as shown in
Figure 1.
However, the freedom of choosing the number of
workers for workstations further complicates ALBP. The
problem becomes twofold: not only assigning tasks but also
allocating workers. The two subproblems are closely cou-
pled, so they cannot be solved separately. We refer to the
2 Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Worker1 Worker1 as follows: Section 2 presents a mathematical formulation of

Worker2 Worker2
mALBP; a detailed description of the proposed hGA is in
… … Section 3; numerical results are demonstrated in Section 4,
followed by a real case study in Section 5. Section 6 con-
CT CT CT CT CT cludes the paper.
Figure 1: Production sequence of a two-manned workstation [2].
2. Mathematical Formulation
assembly line balancing problem with multiple workers in In this section, a nonlinear integer programming model is
workstations as mALBP. Following the traditional taxonomy formulated for mALBP-II. Notations are summarized as
of ALBP [3], mALBP is classified into two types in general: follows.
type I, which attempts to minimize the number of workers
for a given cycle time, and type II, which tries to minimize
the cycle time for a given number of workers. It is worth 2.1. Indices
noticing that in either type, the number of workstations is
not specified beforehand. In this paper, the type II mALBP (i) i, g, h: index of task (i, g, h � 1,2, . . ., n)
(mALBP-II) is studied. For type I mALBP, readers may turn (ii) j: index of station (j � 1,2, . . ., m)
to [4–6] for reference. (iii) k: number of workers in one station (k � 1,2, . . ., K)
Although ALBP has received intensive investigations
(see reviews [3,7,8]), there is a paucity of literature dealing
with mALBP-II. Basically, literature on type II simple 2.2. Parameters
assembly line balancing (SALB) can be found in [9–11]
which does not take multiworker stations into consider- (i) n: number of tasks
ation. In addition, some researchers address another more (ii) m: estimated upper bound of the number of stations
complicated problem, similar to mAPBP, which is called (iii) K: maximum number of workers allowed in one
the assembly line balancing problem with parallel work- station
stations (pALBP). McMullen and Frazier [5] consider a
(iv) W: given total number of workers
multiobjective mALBP with parallel workers in work
centers, and they propose a simulated annealing heuristic (v) ti: duration of task i
to solve the problem. But their problem setting is more like (vi) P : precedence matrix � {(g, h)| task g is an imme-
a type I problem. Öztürk et al. [12] studied pALBP to diate predecessor of task h}
minimize cycle time, but with the assumption that the
number of parallel stations assigned to each stage is given.
Another perspective on studying mALBP is the assembly 2.3. Decision Variables
line balancing problem with worker allocation (wALBP).
(i) C : cycle time
Zhang et al. [13] developed a multiobjective genetic al-
gorithm for wALBP, including one objective to minimize 1, if task i is assigned to station j,
(ii) xij � 􏼨
cycle time. However, in their model, the total number of 0, otherwise.
workstations must be predetermined as a parameter. 1, if station j is assigned k workers,
(iii) yjk � 􏼨
Zaman et al. [14] considered an operator assignment 0, otherwise.
problem within line balancing. They assumed that tasks
were already assigned to workstations. Zacharia and 2.4. Mathematical Model
Nearchou [15] solved a bicriteria assembly line worker
assignment and balancing problem. Two objectives, the min C, (1)
cycle time and the smoothness of the line are optimized. A
smoothness index is proposed as a measure of workload m K

balance among stations. Most recently, Walter et al. [16] st 􏽘 􏽘 kyjk � W, (2)
j�1 k�1
considered the line balancing problem to be smoothing
workloads via branch-and-bound with dynamic pro- m
gramming. Their primary goal is to level the workload 􏽘􏼐jxgj − jxhj 􏼑 ≤ 0, ∀(g, h) ∈ P, (3)
rather than minimize cycle time. j�1
In this paper, we propose a heuristic-mixed genetic al-
gorithm (hGA) for mALBP. The algorithm minimizes cycle m
time as its first objective and balances workload among 􏽘 xij � 1, ∀i, (4)
workstations as its second objective. A greedy heuristic j�1
together with a bisection search is embedded into the
decoding process of the genetic algorithm so that the op- n K

timization of task assignment and worker allocation are 􏽘 ti xij ≤ 􏽘 kyjk C, ∀j, (5)
i�1 k�1
achieved simultaneously. The rest of the paper is organized
Mathematical Problems in Engineering 3

K 33
􏽘 yjk ≤ 1, ∀j, (6) 4
k�1

21 37 36 37
xij � 0, 1, ∀i, j, (7)
1 2 5 7

yjk � 0, 1, ∀j, k. (8)

29 39
The objective function (1) minimizes cycle time. Con-
straint (2) states that the total number of used workers equals 3 6

the number of workers available. Constraint set (3) makes

Figure 2: An example of a precedence graph.
sure that no precedence relationship among tasks is violated.
The constraint set (4) ensures that each task is performed
exactly once. The capacity constraint (5), which is nonlinear, feasible task sequence: 1 3 6 2 4 5 7
ensures that total task durations assigned to one station do
not exceed its capacity. The constraint set (6) means that if a Figure 3: A feasible task sequence.
station is opened, the number of workers at this station is
unique.
of the cycle time. Given a cycle time, a greedy heuristic,
inspired by [18], is used to compute the number of workers
3. Proposed Heuristic-mixed Genetic in need. The given cycle time is changed iteratively until the
Algorithm for mABLP-II number of workers in need meets the number of workers
available.
Genetic algorithm (GA), as a kind of metaheuristics, has
been proved its effectiveness in solving ALBP [17]. In this
section, a heuristic-mixed genetic algorithm is proposed to 3.2.1. Maximum-Utilization Heuristic. Given a cycle time,
solve mABLP-II. The algorithm embeds a greedy heuristic the maximum-utilization heuristic allocates workers and
and a bisection search into the decoding of feasible-se- assigns tasks to workstations to minimize the total number
quence-based chromosomes (individuals), so task assign- of workers in need. Workstations, one after another, are
ment and worker allocation are determined simultaneously. assigned tasks and workers. For one station, the basic
The overall structure of hGA is given in Algorithm 1. procedure of assignment is composed of several stages. Each
stage corresponds to a possible number of workers. At the
first stage, tasks are assigned to the station according to the
3.1. Encoding. Encoding maps a solution space to a coding
feasible task sequence until the sum of the durations of
space. In this study, following [13], feasible task sequences
assigned tasks becomes almost equal to the station capacity
are adopted as chromosomes in the coding space. A feasible
(which equals C at the first stage). If any additional task was
task sequence means following which all task precedence
added, the capacity constraint would be violated. At the
relationships have complied. Regarding feasible sequences as
following stages, tasks are assigned with capacity constraints
chromosomes enables hGA to search efficiently in the
of 2 ∗ C, 3 ∗ C, until K ∗ C. Then the best combination of the
coding space, since every chromosome is always kept feasible
number of workers and tasks is determined according to the
during the entire evolution of hGA; no infeasible solution is
criterion that the workstation utilization, which equals the
generated.
sum of the durations of tasks in the workstation divided by
Encoding happens at the beginning of hGA to generate
the station capacity, should be maximized. After tasks and
the initial population. A feasible task sequence is built by
number of workers are determined for the current work-
repeatedly choosing a task without any predecessor in the
station, then we delete the assigned tasks from the task
sequence and deleting the selected task from the precedence
sequence, let them go to the next workstation, and repeat the
graph until all tasks have been put into the sequence. If more
same procedure, until all tasks have been assigned. Table 1
than one task has no predecessor, i.e., eligible to be chosen,
records the detailed procedure of the heuristic working on
we select one at random. Figure 2 shows an example of a
the feasible task sequence shown in Figure 3. The cycle time
precedence graph. Each node corresponds to a task, and the
is 40 seconds.
numbers above nodes are task durations. One example of a
generated feasible task sequence is shown in Figure 3.
3.2.2. Bisection Decoding. Calling the maximum-utilization
heuristic repeatedly, bisection decoding carries out a bi-
3.2. Decoding. Decoding maps chromosomes (feasible task
section search for the minimum cycle time corresponding to
sequences) back to task and worker assignment solutions.
the chromosome to be decoded. The detailed steps of the
For mALBP-II, we need to find out the minimum cycle time
bisection decoding are as follows:
that each chromosome corresponds to, which becomes a
suboptimization problem in itself. In order to solve the (i) Step 1: let us calculate the lower bound CL and
problem, we developed a heuristic-based bisection search upper bound CU of the cycle time given the number
algorithm that starts from the lower bound and upper bound of workers available W.
4 Mathematical Problems in Engineering

(i) Input: dataset of mALBP-II, GA parameters (popsize, maxgen, cr, mr);

(ii) Output: task and worker assignment solution;
(iii) set t :� 0;
(iv) initialize sequence population P(t);
(v) calculate fitness function value fp(P) by heuristic-mixed decoding;
(vi) while (not maxgen generation) do;
(vii) save the elite of P(t);
(viii) select Pr(t) from P(t) by tournament selection; create Pc(t) from Pr(t) by order crossover; create C(t) from Pc(t) by
insertion mutation;
(ix) calculate fitness function value fp(C);
(x) combine C(t) with the saved elite;
(xi) set P(t + 1) :� C(t); set t :� t + 1;
(xii) end while;
(xiii) decode the elite;
(xiv) return task and worker assignment.

ALGORITHM 1: hGA for mALBP-II.

Table 1: An example of the maximum-utilization heuristic.

Station No. of workers Total duration Capacity Utilization Tasks
1 21 40 0.53 1
1 2 50 80 0.63 1, 3
3 89 120 0.74∗ 1, 3, 6
1 37 40 0.93∗ 2
2 2 70 80 0.88 2, 4
3 106 120 0.88 2, 4, 5
1 33 40 0.83 4
3 2 69 80 0.86 4, 5
3 106 120 0.88∗ 4, 5, 7

1 n 3.3. Selection Operator. In this study, tournament selection

CL � 􏽘t , (9) [19] is used to select parents for crossover in the next
W i�1 i
process. Tournament selection helps to avoid high fitness
individuals dominating the entire population. The tourna-
1 n ment size is typically two, which means two individuals are
CU � 􏽘 t + max􏼈t 􏼉. (10)
W i�1 i 1≤i≤n i selected randomly from the current population, and the one
with the highest fitness is selected. An elite strategy is also
used to make sure that the current best individual is passed
(ii) Step 2: let us calculate the middle point CM of CL
onto the next generation.
and CU
1
CM � (CL + CU). (11)
2 3.4. Crossover Operator. Order crossover (OX) [19] is adopted
as the crossover operator in this paper. The procedure guar-
(iii) Step 3: given a cycle time CM, using the maximum- antees the feasibility of task sequences after crossover. It is
utilization heuristic to calculate the number of demonstrated by an example which is shown in Figure 4.
workers in need WT .
(iv) Step 4: if the difference between CL and CU is less
than the cycle time precision prc, let us go to Step 5, 3.5. Mutation Operator. Feasible insertion is used as the
else go to Step 6. mutation operator in hGA. First, a task is randomly selected.
Second, a feasible range is determined by finding out the
(v) Step 5: if WT is less than or equal to W, we set CT closest immediate predecessor and successor task of the
equal to CM, else we set CT equal to CU. Then we selected task in the chromosome. Finally, a gene position
return CT and exit. within the feasible range is randomly chosen and the selected
(iv) Step 6: if WT is larger than W, we set CL equal to CM, task is inserted. An example of an insertion mutation is
else we set CU equal to CM. Then we go to Step 2. shown in Figure 5.
Mathematical Problems in Engineering 5

parent1: 1 3 6 2 4 5 7
parent2: 3 1 2 5 4 6 7

parent1: 1 3 6
parent2: 3 1 2 5 4 6 7

parent1: 1 3 6 2 4 5 7
parent2: 3 1 2

child1: 1 3 6 2 5 4 7
child2: 3 1 2 6 4 5 7

Figure 4: An example of order crossover.

provided. An attempt is also made to solve the nonlinear

parent: 1 3 6 2 4 5
child: 1 2 3 6 4 5
Figure 5: An example of insertion mutation.
3.6. Fitness Function. The fitness function fp(n) returns a
fitness value for each individual n and it is defined as
CT (n)
fp (n) � −􏼠⌈ ⌉ × prc + std(n) × prc􏼡,
prc
where CT is the cycle time obtained after the bisection
decoding of individual n; prc is the precision required for the
cycle time, e.g., 0.1 seconds; std(n) means the standard
deviation of utilization among workstations, so it is between
0 and 1. ⌈ · ⌉ is a round-up function. The fitness function first
considers the cycle time; when the cycle time is equal, the
task-worker assignment with more even workload distri-
bution is preferred. Since usually fitness value is the larger
the better, a negative sign is put ahead.
4. Numerical Result
To test the performance of the proposed heuristic-mixed
genetic algorithm in solving mALBP-II, a series of com-
putational experiments are carried out. Precedence graphs of
benchmark problems in [20] are used for the tests. Table 2
summed up the characteristics of the test problems.
Numerical results are shown in Table 3. The program is
coded by MATLAB and runs on a 1.66 GHz laptop. The
maximum number of workers allowed in one station is
three. The crossover rate and mutation rate are set as 0.8 and
0.2, respectively. Cycle time precision is 0.1 seconds. The
best, average, worst cycle time, and average computation
time (ACT, unit in second) of ten runs for each combination
of population size and maximum number of generations are
7
integer programming in Section 2 by Lingo, and the best
solutions reported within an acceptable runtime (24 hours)
are listed.
Based on the numerical results, it is concluded that hGA
7 solves mALBP-II effectively and efficiently. Compared to the
solutions returned by Lingo, hGA always outputs better (at
least no worse) solutions in ten runs in much shorter
computational time. Particularly, when the size of problems
becomes larger (problem 8 and problem 9), the superiority
of the solutions returned by hGA turns out to be more
obvious. In addition, all solutions by hGA are very close to
the lower bound of cycle time (which is calculated by
(12)
equation (9)); the optimality gaps, in terms of the lower
bounds, are within 5%.
5. Case Study
In this section, a case study resulting from an interphone
manufacturing plant in China is carried out to demonstrate
the practicality of hGA in solving real-life problems. The
tasks and task durations of assembling an interphone are
listed in Table 4. The corresponding precedence graph of
tasks is shown in Figure 6. It is worth noticing that the
majority of tasks are welding and installation, requiring no
special expensive tools. The assembly of interphones is a
kind of typical manual manufacturing. The problem is, given
the number of workers available, how to group workers into
workstations and assign tasks to them so as to make cycle
time as short as possible within the constraints of task
precedence relationship and workstation capacity.
Problem settings and hGA parameters are summarized
as follows:
(i) Given number of available workers is 20.
(ii) Maximum number of workers in one station is 3
due to space limitation.
(iii) Crossover rate cr � 0.8.
(iv) Mutation rate mr � 0.2.
6 Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Table 2: A summary of test problems.

Problem Precedence graph No. of tasks Min. task duration Max. task duration Sum of task durations
1 Mitchell 21 3 77 791
2 Mitchell 21 2 77 1013
3 Sawyer 30 1 78 989
4 Sawyer 30 2 80 1334
5 Kilbrid 45 5 80 2001
6 Warnecke 58 1 79 2462
7 Tonge 70 1 80 2566
8 Warnecke 58 7 53 1548
9 Tonge 70 1 156 3510

Table 3: Numerical results of test problems.

Parameter hGA Lingo
Problem No. of workers Lower bound
Popsize Maxgen Best Aver. Worst ACT Best
5 10 100 158.7 159.6 160.7 2.43 158.7 158.2
1
10 10 100 79.7 80.8 82 3.54 79.7 79.1
5 10 100 203.3 203.7 205 2.57 203.3 202.6
2
10 10 100 102.7 103.7 104.3 2.78 103.3 101.3
10 20 200 99 99.6 100.5 13.72 99 98.9
3
15 20 200 66.7 67.3 68 14.48 67 65.9
10 20 200 134 134.3 134.5 12.78 134 133.4
4
15 20 200 89.3 90.2 91 14.96 89.3 88.9
10 30 300 200.3 200.6 201 43 200.3 200.1
5
20 30 300 101 101.3 101.7 45.24 105 100.1
10 30 300 246.5 246.5 246.7 40.43 247.5 246.2
6
20 30 300 124 124.6 125.7 53.73 125 123.1
20 50 500 128.7 129.2 129.5 177.77 131.5 128.3
7
40 50 500 65.7 66.1 67 251.38 71.7 64.2
10 30 300 155 155.3 155.5 44.48 192.7 154.8
8
20 30 300 78 78.4 79 57.86 78 77.4
20 50 500 176.7 177.4 178 205.19 182 175.5
9
40 50 500 89.7 90.7 91.3 274.67 106 87.8

Table 4: Tasks and task durations of interphone assembling.

No. Task Dur.(s) No. Task Dur.(s)
1 Weld diode 7 16 Install battery chip 10
2 Weld transistor 6 17 Install antenna cloth 6
3 Weld capacitor 6.5 18 Install earbud holder 6
4 Weld resistance 8 19 Close case 8
5 Weld chip capacitor 1 4 20 Screw 16
6 Weld chip capacitor 2 4 21 Prepare package 8
7 Weld 8pinIC 16 22 Label package 3
8 Weld 24pinIC 32 23 Prepare inner package 6
9 Prepare antenna 9 24 Fold inner package 7
10 Weld antenna 7 25 Fold instruction 5
11 Weld volume switch 5 26 Put instruction 2
12 Weld power switch 5 27 Visual inspection 7
13 Weld shell lens 23 28 Put interphone 2
14 Install decoration 5 29 Seal package 4
15 Install dealer rubber 3 30 Wrap package 3

(v) Population size popsize � 10.
(vi) Maximum number of generation maxgen � 100.
We ran hGA ten times, and one of the best solutions is
presented in Table 5. Lingo is also used to solve the problem.
The returned solutions are compared by hGA and Lingo,
although they output the same cycle time after optimization,
the solution by hGA is superior because the workstation
utilizations (worker workloads) are more even among
workstations.
Mathematical Problems in Engineering 7

2 14 16 18
11
3

1 4 8 12 13 19

5
10
6 7 9 15 17

23 26 28

19 20 22 24 30

21 25 27

29

Figure 6: The precedence graph of interphone assembly tasks.

Table 5: Solutions of the case study problem by hGA and Lingo.

hGA Lingo
Work-station
Tasks No. of workers Utilization Tasks No. of workers Utilization
1 1, 3, 9 2 0.9375 1, 2, 4 2 0.875
2 2, 4, 6, 7 3 0.9444 3, 6, 7, 9 3 0.9861
3 5, 8 3 1 5, 8 3 1
4 10, 11 1 1 10, 11 1 1
5 12, 13, 14, 15 3 1 12, 13, 14, 15 3 1
6 16, 17, 18 2 0.9167 16, 17, 18 2 0.9167
7 19, 20 2 1 19, 20 2 1
8 21, 22, 23, 24 2 1 21, 22 1 0.9167
9 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 2 0.9583 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 3 1
Cycle time 12 12
Utilization SD 0.0337 0.0492

6. Conclusion Data Availability

In this paper, we consider a type II line balancing problem The data for the case study have been included in the
with multiple workers in workstations (mALBP). Unlike manuscript.
the manufacturing environment, which depends heavily
on automatic equipment, manual or semimanual
manufacturing enjoys much higher flexibility, allowing
Conflicts of Interest
multiple workers to perform the same set of tasks on The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.
workpieces in the same workstation simultaneously and
independently. The freedom of specifying the number of
workers in workstations makes the classic NP-hard ALBP Acknowledgments
even harder to solve. A heuristic-mixed genetic algorithm
This work is supported by the National Natural Science
(hGA) is therefore proposed to solve the problem. The
Foundation of China (Grant no. 72101162).
algorithm minimizes cycle time as its first objective and
balances workload among workstations as its second
objective. A greedy heuristic and a bisection search are References
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