Integrated Approach for solving Cell Formation and Layout Problems Using Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, we address the issue of a cellular munufacturing system layout design, which, in essence, consists of two main problems, cell formation and cell layout, While a number of studies have been conducted on this issue, the two problems were usually considered sequentially, and the impact of cell layout was ignored when solving cell formation. Moreover, it was often assumed that all cells are equal in area and shape, which is not practical for industry-scaled problems. We propose an integrated approach using the Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve the problems simultaneously, with an assumption that not all cell areas and shapes are equal. Our numerical experiments and results show that our method performs better compared to a conventional method in which cell formation and cell layout are considered sequentially.