Title: Cellular layout formation by using weighted similarity-based modified flow matrix with process sequence data

Authors: M. Shunmugasundaram; V. Anbumalar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, CMR Technical Campus, Kandlakoya, Hyderabad – 501401, Telangana, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Velammal College of Engineering and Technology, Madurai – 625009, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: Cellular layout formation (CLF) is an important problem in the design of a cellular manufacturing system (CMS). From the previous studies, most of the researchers have used machine part incidence matrix (MPIM) as input in CMS. In this paper, weighted similarity based modified flow matrix is proposed to solve the cell formation problem (CFP) and CLF simultaneously. The objective of our proposed approach is to group dissimilar machines based on the process sequence of different parts. Two well-known benchmark problems are selected from the literature and results are compared based on modified grouping efficacy with the existing methods. The results clearly indicated that our proposed approach outperforms the previously proposed methods.

Keywords: cell formation; cellular layout; cellular manufacturing system; CMS; machine part incidence matrix; MPIM; similarity coefficient; modified flow matrix; MGTE; instant forward movement; instant backward movement; process sequence.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2020.105817

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2020 Vol.34 No.1, pp.61 - 77

Received: 20 Jul 2016
Accepted: 07 Nov 2016
Published online: 16 Mar 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article