DUPLICATION OF MACHINES AND SUBCONTRACTING OF PARTS IN THE PRESENCE OF ALTERNATIVE CELL LOCATIONS

In this paper a polynomial programming model is presented to deal with the processes of machine duplication and part subcontracting in the p resence of alternative cell locations and maximum number of machines t hat can be assigned to a cell. As the model formulated for the problem can be proven strongly NP-hard, a tabu search-based heuristic solutio n algorithm is presented for solving problems that have industrial mer it. A simple example is solved to demonstrate the applicability of the algorithm at two different budgetary levels. The example further demo nstrates that alternative cell locations indeed have a significant imp act in dealing with the processes of machine duplication and part subc ontracting in cellular manufacturing systems. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scienc e Ltd.