On a learning precedence graph concept for the automotive industry

Assembly line balancing problems (ALBP) consist in assigning the total workload for manufacturing a product to stations of an assembly line as typically applied in automotive industry. The assignment of tasks to stations is due to restrictions which can be expressed in a precedence graph. However, (automotive) manufacturers usually do not have sufficient information on their precedence graphs. As a consequence, the elaborate solution procedures for different versions of ALBP developed by more than 50years of intensive research are often not applicable in practice.