A simulated annealing approach for manufacturing cell formation with multiple identical machines

One of the crucial steps in the design of a cellular manufacturing system is the cell formation problem, which involves grouping the parts into part families and machines into manufacturing cells, so that parts with similar processing requirements are manufactured within the same cell. When modelling this problem it is usually assumed that the specific machine in which each operation is carried out is known. In a cellular manufacturing system where multiple, functionally identical, machines are available, a new degree of freedom can be introduced into this problem––the allocation of the operations to specific machines. In this paper a mathematical programming model for the cell formation problem with multiple identical machines, which minimises the intercellular flow, is presented. Due to the combinatorial nature of this problem a simulated annealing algorithm was developed to solve it.