A BINARY INTEGER PROGRAMMING APPROACH FOR SIMULTANEOUS MACHINE-PART GROUPING IN CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

This paper presents the development of a comprehensive model and the i dentification of a suitable solution technique for evaluating the effe ctiveness of simultaneous part-machine groupings in cellular manufactu ring systems. The objective function of the model is formulated as max imizing a unified measure of effectiveness evaluated as a weighted sum of fractions representative of the (negative of) total moves and in-c ell utilizations. All of the operational constraints associated with s etting-up a cellular manufacturing system are included in the model. T hese represent processing time requirements of parts on machines, sequ ence of operations, non-consecutive operations scheduled to be perform ed on the same machine, machine capacities, and the limitation set on the maximum number of machines that can be assigned to a cell. The mod el assumes that the desired number of manufacturing cells can be deter mined a priori by the management of the parts manufacturing company. T he original model, formulated as a quadratic binary programming model, is subsequently converted into a linear binary programming model. The model is implemented by solving an example problem chosen from publis hed literature, and the solution obtained is proven to be superior to that obtained from previous models.