Cell forming and cell balancing of virtual cellular manufacturing systems with alternative processing routes using genetic algorithm

Hosseini, Adib; Paydar, Mohammad Mahdi; Mahdavi, Iraj; Jouzdani, Javid

doi:10.22094/joie.2016.249

Cell forming and cell balancing of virtual cellular manufacturing systems with alternative processing routes using genetic algorithm

Document Type : Original Manuscript

Authors

¹ Department of Industrial Engineering, Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, Babol, Iran

² Department of Industrial Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology

³ PhD, Department of Industrial Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran

10.22094/joie.2016.249

Abstract

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is one of the most important subfields in the design of manufacturing systems and as a recently emerged field of study and practice, virtual cellular manufacturing (VCM) inherits the importance from CM. One type of VCM problems is VCM with alternative processing routes from which the route for processing each part should be selected. In this research, a bi-objective mathematical programming model is designed in order to obtain optimal routing of parts, the layout of machines and the assignment of cells to locations and to minimize the production costs and to balance the cell loads. The proposed mathematical model is solved by multi-choice goal programming (MCGP). Since CM models are NP-Hard, a genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to solve the model for large-sized problem instances and the results obtained from both methods are compared. Finally, a conclusion is made and some visions for future works are offered.
Cellular manufacturing (CM) is one of the most important subfields in the design of manufacturing systems and as a recently emerged field of study and practice, virtual cellular manufacturing (VCM) inherits the importance from CM. One type of VCM problems is VCM with alternative processing routes from which the route for processing each part should be selected. In this research, a bi-objective mathematical programming model is designed in order to obtain optimal routing of parts, the layout of machines and the assignment of cells to locations and to minimize the production costs and to balance the cell loads. The proposed mathematical model is solved by multi-choice goal programming (MCGP). Since CM models are NP-Hard, a genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to solve the model for large-sized problem instances and the results obtained from both methods are compared. Finally, a conclusion is made and some visions for future works are offered.

Highlights

A bi-objective mathematical programming model is designed for a virtual cellular manufacturing system with alternative processing routes
Optimal routing of parts, the layout of machines and the assignment of cells to locations are obtained
The proposed model is solved utilizing multi-choice goal programming and a genetic algorithm for large-sized problem instances

Keywords