An integrated approach for the design of plant layout and material flows

Cellular Manufacturing is a successful application of Group Technology concepts: we want to group parts into families having similar characteristics and identify dedicated set of machines (cells) to process the different families while minimizing the number of parts that need to be processed by machines placed in different cells (Inter-Cell Flow). The proposed approach consists on iteratively running an algorithm for the cell formation. At each iteration, (i) we run a simulation for the cell configuration obtained in the optimization phase, (ii) we measure a set of performance indicators, and, (iii) on the ground of a suitably designed feedback indicator, we re-define similarity coefficients for the cell formation. Both in the optimization and feedback phases, techniques based on a greedy-like approach and Simulated Annealing are introduced. Simulation experiments are performed varying demand scenarios and material flow management rules. Encouraging results are presented and discussed.