Title: A hybrid neural network approach to cell formation in cellular manufacturing

Authors: Sourav Sengupta; Tamal Ghosh; Pranab K. Dan

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, West Bengal University of Technology, BF 142, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700064, India. ' Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, West Bengal University of Technology, BF 142, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700064, India. ' Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, West Bengal University of Technology, BF 142, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700064, India

Abstract: The design of Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) has attained the significant interest of academicians, researchers and practitioners over the last three decades. CMS is regarded as an efficient production strategy for batch type of production. Literature suggests that since the last two decades neural network based methods have been intensively used in cell formation problems while production factor such as operation time is merely considered. This paper presents a new hybrid neural network approach, Fuzzy ART-Centroid Linkage Clustering Technique (FACLCT), to solve the part-machine grouping problems in cellular manufacturing systems considering operation time. The performance of the proposed technique is tested with problems from open literature and the results are compared with the existing clustering models such as simple C-Linkage, K-Means, modified ART1 and genetic algorithm and achieved better performance. The novelty of this study lies in the simple and efficient methodology to produce quick solutions with least computational efforts.

Keywords: cell formation; group technology; cellular manufacturing; artificial neural networks; ANNs; manufacturing cells; fuzzy adaptive resonance theory; centroid linkage; agglomerative clustering.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2011.045484

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2011 Vol.10 No.4, pp.360 - 376

Received: 11 Oct 2010
Accepted: 23 Jul 2011

Published online: 19 Feb 2012 *

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