Manufacturing cell formation using similarity coefficients and pair-wise interchange: formulation and comparison

Abstract Many algorithms have been proposed to form manufacturing cells from component routeings. Most of these methods require specialized algorithms for implementation. Some others use well-known procedures such as integer programming. But these may be difficult for practising managers to comprehend. In this study we propose a simple method that can be implemented using spreadsheet software and an inexpensive layout package such as CRAFT. In addition, we also compare our procedure with many existing procedures using eight well-known problems from the literature. The results show that the proposed procedure compares well with the existing procedures using three evaluation measures. Therefore, this procedure may be useful to practitioners and researchers.

[1]  Nancy Lea Hyer,et al.  Procedures for the part family/machine group identification problem in cellular manufacturing , 1986 .

[2]  Paul J. Schweitzer,et al.  Problem Decomposition and Data Reorganization by a Clustering Technique , 1972, Oper. Res..

[3]  Andrew Kusiak,et al.  The facility layout problem , 1987 .

[4]  J. King,et al.  Machine-component group formation in group technology: review and extension , 1982 .

[5]  I. Hamilton Emmons.  Storm: Personal Version 3.0 : Quantitative Modeling for Decision Support , 1992 .

[6]  Jack R. Meredith,et al.  A comparison of selected manufacturing cell formation techniques , 1990 .

[7]  J. Witte.  The use of similarity coefficients in production flow analysis , 1980 .

[8]  John McAuley,et al.  Machine grouping for efficient production , 1972 .

[9]  Jerry C. Wei,et al.  An Optimal Model for Cell Formation Decisions , 1990 .

[10]  Vinod Kumar,et al.  Entropic measures of manufacturing flexibility , 1987 .

[11]  Allan S. Carrie,et al.  Numerical taxonomy applied to group technology and plant layout , 1973 .

[12]  Anthony Vannelli,et al.  Strategic subcontracting for efficient disaggregated manufacturing , 1986 .

[13]  M. Chandrasekharan,et al.  MODROC: an extension of rank order clustering for group technology , 1986 .

[14]  J. Miltenburg,et al.  A comparative evaluation of nine well-known algorithms for solving the cell formation problem in group technology , 1991 .

[15]  Ronald G. Askin,et al.  A Hamiltonian path approach to reordering the part-machine matrix for cellular manufacturing , 1991 .

[16]  N. Suresh,et al.  Machine-component cell formation in group technology : a neural network approach , 1992 .

[17]  C. Mosier.  An experiment investigating the application of clustering procedures and similarity coefficients to the GT machine cell formation problem , 1989 .

[18]  Nallan C. Suresh,et al.  Achieving factory automation through Group Technology principles , 1985 .

[19]  D. A. Milner,et al.  Direct clustering algorithm for group formation in cellular manufacture , 1982 .

[20]  M. Chandrasekharan,et al.  An ideal seed non-hierarchical clustering algorithm for cellular manufacturing , 1986 .

[21]  Nancy Lea Hyer,et al.  Cellular manufacturing in the U.S. industry: a survey of users , 1989 .

[22]  J. King.  Machine-component grouping in production flow analysis: an approach using a rank order clustering algorithm , 1980 .

[23]  Chao-Hsien Chu.  Cluster analysis in manufacturing cellular formation , 1989 .