Design of Cellular Manufacturing using Mathematical Programming: a comparative study with simulation modelling

Machine-part family formation is one of major applications of group technology (GT). The machine cell formation problem in cellular manufacturing system (CMS) involves the decomposition of the manufacturing system into machine cells. Part families are identified such that they are fully processed within a machine cell. The problem of cell design is a very complex task with wide ranging implications for any organization. Cell design is generally understood as the problem of identifying a set of part types that are suitable for manufacturing on a group of machines. Among the many methods utilized in cell design, the distance or dissimilarity between two entries is fairly less used. In this study, a mathematical programming model based on the Minkowski distance measure to minimize the total distance between entries is introduced. Furthermore, a hypothetical manufacturing facility with 10 machines and 15 parts is used as a case. Finally, simulation models are developed for two manufacturing systems, a new cellular manufacturing and a conventional job shop manufacturing system. The main purpose of this paper is to combine different techniques such as the design and evaluation of a cellular manufacturing system.