The growing demand for customization in manufacturing industries such as automotive and home appliances has brought significant production challenges, making Mixed-Model Assembly Lines (MMALs) widely adopted in mass customization due to their flexibility advantages. The integrated optimization of order allocation and lot-sizing sequencing for MMALs under the Assembly-To-Order (ATO) mode is crucial, which needs to balance the minimization of assembly completion time, production line load balancing, and material consumption equalization. This paper addresses this integrated optimization problem by constructing a multi-objective mathematical model for joint decision-making. Furthermore, an improved multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (INSGA-II) is proposed. Specific encoding-decoding methods and neighborhood operators are designed to achieve effective search. Variable Neighborhood Descent (VND) is embedded to enhance local search capability. An elite archive with information feedback combined with the population diversity detection strategy is adopted to improve algorithm diversity. The purpose of this study is to enhance the efficiency of the production system and ensure the flexible production of multi-variety products and on-time delivery of orders through the proposed optimization scheme. By constructing multiple instances and conducting comparative experiments with other competitive algorithms, the results demonstrate that the performance of the improved algorithm is superior to that of other algorithms.

Aiming at distribution logistics planning in green manufacturing, heterogeneous-vehicle vehicle routing problems are identified for the first time with multiple time windows that meet load constraints, arrival time window constraints, material demand, etc. This problem is expressed by a mathematical model with the characteristics of the vehicle routing problem with split deliveries by order. A hybrid ant colony optimization algorithm based on tabu search is designed to solve the problem. The search time is reduced by a peripheral search strategy and an improved probability transfer rule. Parameter adaptive design is used to avoid premature convergence, and the local search is enhanced through a variety of neighborhood structures. Based on the problem that the time window cannot be violated, the time relaxation rule is designed to update the minimum wait time. The algorithm has the best performance that meets the constraints by comparing with other methods.