Design of cellular manufacturing system for power press industry to reduce total travelling time by hybrid algorithm

Abstract

Part family identification and machine cell formation are the two major steps in cellular manufacturing system. Cell formation is a complex process and there are several approaches for this purpose vis., array based clustering, agglomerative clustering, mathematical programming, graph partitioning and non-traditional methods. The problem with first two approaches is that the quality of the solution is dependent of the initial part machine incidence matrix. A new algorithm for cell formation combining the techniques of array based clustering and agglomerative clustering is proposed. The above proposed method is tested by using standard problems and compared with other method results for the same standard problems. Grouping efficiency is the most widely used measures of quality for cellular manufacturing systems. The proposed algorithm is used to form manufacturing cells in a power press industry to increase productivity by reducing total travelling time.