The impact of cell formation on layout designs in cellular manufacturing

This paper provides a procedure to address all three phases of the design f or cellular manufacturing namely parts/machines grouping, intra-cell and in ter-cell layout designs concurrently. It provides a platform to investigate the impact of the cell formation method on intra-cell and inter-cell layou t designs and vice versa by generating multiple efficient layout designs fo r different cell partitioning strategies. This approach enables the decisio n maker to have wider choices with regard to the different number of cells and to assess various criteria such as travelling cost, duplication of mach ines, space requirement against each alternative. The performance of the mo del is demonstrated by applying it to an example selected from Literature.