Contents 1 Introduction
The automotive manufacturing contains four main processes: Pressing, Joining, Painting and Assembly. Assembly production is the last stage in which all parts and components are installed on the vehicle body. These works are done on the assembly line that was firstly utilized in auto industry by Henry Ford. After a century, production technologies improve, and the assembly line is widely used in many manufacturing situations. The assembly line in a vehicle factory usually consists of a main assembly line and several pre-assembly lines. There are 1500 to 2000 components that need to be installed in the assembly line for a modern passenger vehicle. Planners in the assembly factory design the sequence of installations before the Start of Production (SOP). The assembly line balancing schedule is planned based on these works. Most line balancing works are done manually according to planners personal experiences in the factory. However, as the models increase it is challenging to finish the line balancing work. The assembly line balancing problem is a demonstrated NP-hard problem. An efficient algorithm for the line balancing problem is necessary to generate a high-quality solution automatically.
