A cost-based algorithm for design of Cellular Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

This paper describes a cost-based algorithm that deals with the design problems of Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) associated exceptional parts and bottleneck machines. The developed algorithm employes explicitly the main elements of manufacturing costs, such as the fixed machine cost, the production cost, the setup cost, and the material handling cost. The algorithm is based on the minimization of sum of these costs, and considers three alternatives to solve exceptional issues. The first alternative is to try to eliminate the maximum number of intercellular movements from the presently configured manufacturing system by buying and installing extra bottleneck machines into the appropriate cells. The second alternative considers the alternative process plans available and tries to complete the job using the overtime basis in the small machine cells. The third alternative considers the possibility of subcontracting the processing operations of exceptional part(s) to outside vendors to reduce the overall cost for the manufacturing system. The total costs of the three cases are compared and the best alternative for any given problem is identified. In order to illustrate performance of the algorithm developed, a test example is provided.