Efficiency vs. number of cells in cell formation

The effects of some of the physical, technological, or organizational constraints will force the system designer to specify the number of cells in advance. Different layouts and alternative optimal solutions will give the designer more flexibility to avoid some of these constraints. In this paper a sensitive analysis of the impact of number of cells on grouping efficiency measures in cellular manufacturing systems was elaborated on two cases borrowed from the literature. In the first case study, three of the well-known grouping efficiency measures were used on one manufacturing system with different number of cells. It is found that the efficiency of the system varied with the number of cells. If processing time and power data are available for these cells, then the designer can choose the cell which has the lowest energy. In the second case the analysis was done using one grouping measure on one system (same number of cells) having different alternative optimal solutions. The efficiency of this system remains constant for all solution.