Cell formation with alternative process plans and machine capacity constraints: A new combined approach

This paper addresses the problem of manufacturing cell formation with alter native process plans and machine capacity constraints. Given routings, capa cities of machines and quantities of parts to produce, the problem consists in grouping machines into manufacturing cells and in selecting one process plan for each part. The objective is to minimize the inter-cell traffic, r especting machine capacity constraints. A new approach combining the simula ted annealing method for the cell formation and a branch-and-bound method f or the routing selection is presented. An illustrative example and numerica l results are given. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.