Solving assembly line balancing problem using genetic algorithm with heuristics-treated initial population

Although genetic algorithm (GA) has been widely used to address assembly line balancing problems (ALBP), not much attention has been given to the population initialization procedure. In this paper, a comparison is made between a randomly generated initial population and a heuristics-treated initial population. A heuristics-treated population is a mix of randomly and heuristics generated individuals in the initial population. Both populations are tested with a proposed GA using established test problems from literature. The GA, using a fitness function based on realized cycle time is capable of generating good solutions