Genetic Algorithmsfor Integrating Cell Formation with Machine Layout and Scheduling

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

Cellular manufacturing (CM) has been recognized as an innovative practice for companies to gain efficiency as well as flexibility under today’s small-to-medium lot and customization-oriented manufacturing environment. Among the necessary decisions for a successful CM implementation, cell formation (CF), group layout (GL) and group scheduling (GS) are the three most popular ones. These decisions are interrelated and may impact each other but they are often treated separately or as a sequential decision in prior research. In this paper, we propose a new approach to concurrently make the CF, GL and GS decisions. A conceptual framework and mathematical model, which integrates these decisions, are proposed. A hierarchical genetic algorithm (HGA) is developed to solve the integrated cell design problem. Two heuristic operators are proposed to enhance its computational performance. The results from our study indicate that: (1) the concurrent approach often found better solutions than the sequential one, and (2) with the proposed heuristic operators, the HGA procedure performed better than without them.

Keywords

Cell formation, Group layout, Group scheduling, Genetic algorithms, Cellular manufacturing

Discipline

Computer Sciences | Management Information Systems | Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

Computers and Industrial Engineering

Volume

53

Issue

2

First Page

277

Last Page

289

ISSN

0360-8352

Identifier

10.1016/j.cie.2007.06.021

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2007.06.021

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