DESIGN OF CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

In this paper, we develop a mixed integer program for the design of ce llular manufacturing systems. We assume that there are alternate proce ss plans for each part and that each operation in these plans can be p erformed on alternate machines. The objective of the model is to minim ize the sum of investment, processing and material handling costs. Pro cessing times, capacities of machines and cell size restrictions are c onsidered in the process. Part families, machine groups and part plans are identified concurrently. For the efficient solution of the relaxe d linear program an efficient column generation scheme is provided. In the problem under consideration columns are generated by solving simp le semi-assignment problems. Three different strategies are tested for generating the columns and the best scheme is selected for subsequent use in the branch and bound procedure developed. Finally, computation al experience is provided for randomly generated test problems.