Machine-component grouping using genetic algorithms

One major problem in cellular manufacturing is the grouping of component parts with similar processing requirements into part families, and machines into manufacturing cells to facilitate the manufacturing of specific part families assigned to them. The objective is to minimize the total inter-cell and intra-cell movements of parts during the manufacturing process. In this paper, a mathematical model is presented to describe the characteristics of such a problem. An approach based on the concept of genetic algorithms is developed to determine the optimal machine-component groupings. Illustrative examples are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach. Indeed, the results obtained show that the proposed genetic approach is a simple and efficient means for solving the machine-component grouping problem.