A one-step tabu search algorithm for manufacturing cell design

As part of the cellular manufacturing design process, machines must be grou ped in cells and the corresponding part families must be assigned. Limits o n both the number of machines per cell and the number of parts per family c an be considered. A weighted sum of intracell voids and intercellular moves is used to evaluate the quality of the solutions. We present a tabu search algorithm that systematically explores feasible machine cells configuratio ns determining the corresponding part families using a linear network flow model. The performance of this tabu search is benchmarked against two simul ated annealing approaches, another tabu search approach and three heuristic s: (ZODIAC, GRAFICS and MST).