Research on the Laborers Allocation for the Aircraft Assembly Line Using an Improved Greedy Algorithm

Abstract

Abstract-As a complex discrete manufacturing system, aircraft assembly line has a lot of different types of laborers. Currently, there are few effective optimization algorithms for laborers allocation problem (LAP). Based on a real aircraft assembly line and its characteristics, the paper proposed an improved greedy algorithm (IGA) which tries to resolve laborer allocation problem. This paper formulates multiple objective functions and constraints according to the actual demand. The utility function is employed to deal with the difficulty of integrating several conflicting and incommensurable objectives into one overall measure. The IGA is an optimization method to achieve balance control of LAP in the discrete manufacturing system based on the core idea of the greedy algorithm. That is to say, optimization can be obtained through moving different operations in a parallel way while the precedence constraints remain unchanged. During the optimization process, 11 attributes are defined for each operation so that the code can be written and the mathematical calculations can be conducted easily. Meanwhile, an example is used to illustrate the optimization process of the algorithm. In this paper, a self-contrast experiment is conducted to verify the validity of the IGA for LAP. The experimental results demonstrate that the IGA can effectively solve the LAP for aircraft assembly line.Index Terms-Aircraft assembly line, optimization, laborer allocation problem (LAP), improved greedy algorithm (IGA).