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

The use of intelligent techniques in the manufacturing field has been growing the last decades due to the fact that most manufacturing optimization problems are combinatorial and NP hard. This paper examines recent developments in the field of evolutionary computation for manufacturing optimization. Significant papers in various areas are highlighted, and comparisons of results are given wherever data are available. A wide range of problems is covered, from job shop and flow shop scheduling, to process planning and assembly line balancing.