MINIMIZING INTERCELLULAR PART MOVEMENTS IN MANUFACTURING CELL-FORMATION

When using the machine grouping approach for designing cellular manufa cturing cells, improper machine assignment commonly arises resulting i n higher intercellular movement of parts. The objective of this paper is therefore to examine the cause of such a problem and to propose a w orkable optimal solution for it. A machine grouping algorithm that is based in the new machine unit concept is developed and the solution is proven to be optimal at each stage. A comparison of the proposed mode l with two existing algorithms is presented, followed by a discussion on the behaviour of machine cell formation.