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A flow matrix-based heuristic algorithm for cell formation and layout design in cellular manufacturing system

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Abstract

Cellular manufacturing is a successful application of group technology (GT) concepts. The aim of a cellular manufacturing system (CMS) is to identify similar manufacturing processes and features where machines are grouped into machine cells based on their contributions to the production process. In the last three decades of research in cell formation, researchers have mainly used zero-one machine component incidence matrix as the input data for the problem. However, recently efforts have been made to use other data structures, such as interval data and ordinal data (consisting of sequence of processing). Sequence data provide valuable information about the flow patterns of various jobs in a manufacturing system. This study develops a heuristic algorithm based on flow matrix for cell formation and layout design in a simultaneous fashion using sequence data. The numerical results of the algorithm on the available problems in the literature indicate the usefulness of the algorithm regarding to performance indices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, Mazandaran University of Science & Technology, P.O. Box 734, Babol, Iran

    Iraj Mahdavi, Babak Shirazi & Mohammad Mahdi Paydar

Authors
  1. Iraj Mahdavi
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  2. Babak Shirazi
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  3. Mohammad Mahdi Paydar
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Correspondence to Iraj Mahdavi.

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Mahdavi, I., Shirazi, B. & Paydar, M.M. A flow matrix-based heuristic algorithm for cell formation and layout design in cellular manufacturing system. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 39, 943–953 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-007-1274-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-007-1274-7

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