Beam Search Techniques for Mixed Model Assembly Line Sequencing

We study the mixed-model assembly line sequencing problem that considers the following objectives: 1) leveling the part usage, and 2) leveling workload on the final assembly line. We propose Beam Search algorithms for this problem. Unlike the traditional Beam Search, the proposed algorithms have information exchange and backtracking capabilities. The performances of the proposed algorithms are compared with those of the heuristics in the literature. The results indicate that the proposed methods generally outperform the existing heuristics. A comprehensive bibliography is also provided in this study.