Recent developments in evolutionary computation for manufacturing optimization: Problems, solutions, and comparisons

The use of intelligent techniques in the manufacturing field has been growi ng the last decades due to the fact that most manufacturing optimization pr oblems are combinatorial and NP hard. This paper examines recent developmen ts in the field of evolutionary computation for manufacturing optimization. Significant papers in various areas are highlighted, and comparisons of re sults are given wherever data are available. A wide range of problems is co vered, from job shop and flow shop scheduling, to process planning and asse mbly line balancing.