Optimization of manufacturing cell formation with a multi-functional mathematical programming model

Cellular manufacturing (CM) has received considerable interest owing to its promising application as an appropriate manufacturing philosophy for just-in-time (JIT) and flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Cell formation (CF), i.e. the grouping of parts with similar design features or processing requirements into part families and the corresponding machines into machine cells, is the first stage of designing an effective CM system.Numerous analytical approaches have been proposed to solve the CF problem. Among which, mathematical programming (MP) represents the large percentage of literature as heuristic procedures. However, the related MP models have not been synthesized and classified in a systematic manner for the novice. Furthermore, most MP models attempting to adopt large number essential features are extremely complicated. Therefore, in this work, we present a multi-functional MP model that incorporates the merits of related CF models based on the systematic study of MP models. The proposed model can offer the suitable modules that include the different objective functions and constraints for user to solve the related problem. In addition, analysis results demonstrate that the proposed model’s performance to outperform the other related models.