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International Journal of Production Research

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A grouping genetic algorithm for the multi-objective cell formation problem

K. Yasuda , L. Hu & Y. Yin
a a a b

Industrial and Management Science, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Aobaku, Sendai 980-8576, Japan
b

Industrial and Management Science, Department of Public Policy and Social Studies, Yamagata University, 1-4-12 Kojirakawa-cho, Yamagata-shi 990-8560, Japan
c

Industrial and Management Science, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Aobaku, Sendai 980-8576, Japan E-mail: Version of record first published: 22 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: K. Yasuda , L. Hu & Y. Yin (2005): A grouping genetic algorithm for the multiobjective cell formation problem, International Journal of Production Research, 43:4, 829-853 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207540512331311859

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International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 43, No. 4, 15 February 2005, 829853

A grouping genetic algorithm for the multi-objective cell formation problem

K. YASUDA*y, L. HUy and Y. YINz

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yIndustrial and Management Science, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8576, Japan zIndustrial and Management Science, Department of Public Policy and Social Studies, Yamagata University, 1-4-12 Kojirakawa-cho, Yamagata-shi 990-8560, Japan

(Received June 2004) In this research, we propose an ecient method to solve the multi-objective cell formation problem (CFP) partially adopting Falkenauers grouping genetic algorithm (GGA). The objectives are the minimization of both the cell load variation and intercell ows considering the machines capacities, part volumes and part processing times on the machines. We relax the cell size constraints and solve the CFP without predetermination of the number of cells, which is usually dicult to predict in a real-world CFP design. We also make some eort to improve the eciency of our algorithm with respect to initialization of the population, tness valuation, and keeping crossover operator from cloning. Numerical examples are tested and comparisons are made with general genetic algorithms (GAs). The result shows that our method is eective and exible in both grouping machines into cells and deciding on the number of cells for the optimal solution. Keywords: Cellular manufacturing; Cell formation; Multi-objective optimization; Grouping genetic algorithm

1. Introduction Cellular manufacturing (CM) is the application of group technology (GT) in manufacturing systems. GT is a manufacturing philosophy, which determines and divides the components into families and the machines into cells by taking advantage of part similarity in processing and design functions. Since GT allows for the combined benets of mass production while dealing with multi-product, smalllot-sized production, the reported benets of CM are simplied and reduced material handling, reduced set-up time, shorter lead times, reduced work-in-process, improved productivity, simplied scheduling and better overall control of operations (Wemmerlov and Johnson 1997). The foremost problem for cellular manufacturing system (CMS) design is cell formation (CF), which groups the machines into machine cells and parts into

*Corresponding author. Email: yasuda@econ.tohoku.ac.jp

International Journal of Production Research ISSN 00207543 print/ISSN 1366588X online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/00207540512331311859

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part families. The cell formation problem (CFP) started with Burbidge (1963), who introduced the rst method of production ow analysis (PFA). For decades, many methods for the CFP have been reported and can be classied into the following (Oodile et al. 1994): . Array-based methods: such as King (1980). . Clustering methods: such as McAuley (1972), Carrie (1973), Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1986, 1987), Gupta and Seifoddini (1990), Srinivasan and Narendran (1991), Nair and Narendran (1998), Yasuda and Yin (2001). . Mathematical programming-based methods: such as Kusiak (1987), Srinivasan et al. (1990), Adil et al. (1996), Yin and Yasuda (2002). . Graph theoretic methods: such as Rajagopalan and Batra (1975), Kumar et al. (1986), Askin et al. (1991), Srinivasan (1994), Mukhopadyay et al. (2000). . Neural network-based methods: such as Malave and Ramachandran (1991), Kaparthi and Suresh (1992, 1993), Moon (1992), Venugopal and Narendran (1994), Kamal and Burke (1996), Guerrero et al. (2002). . Search methods: Tabu search: such as Logendran et al. (1994), Baykasoglu and Gindy (2000). Simulated annealing: such as Venugopal and Narendran (1992a), Chen et al. (1995), Boctor (1996), Su and Hsu (1998). Genetic Algorithm (GA): since our proposed method is based on GA, a review is detailed in the next section. Of the above methods, GA is one of the meta-heuristic algorithms, which was introduced by Holland (1975). GA is a class of iterative procedures that simulate the evolution process of a population of structures subject to competitive forces prescribed in Darwins survival of the ttest principle. The process of evolution is random yet guided by a selection mechanism based on the tness of individual structures. If carefully designed and properly implemented, a GA will exhibit behaviour similar to that described in Darwins evolution theory, and relatively high tness structures have a greater chance to survive and to produce even higher tness ospring. The result will be an increase in the overall tness of a population in each new generation. Genetic algorithms are dierent from the traditional optimization and search techniques. Goldberg (1989) concluded the dierences as: 1. GAs work with a coding of the parameter set, not the parameters themselves. 2. GAs search from a population of points, not a single point. 3. GAs use information of tness function, not derivatives or other auxiliary knowledge. 4. GAs use probabilistic transition rules, not deterministic rules. It is known that the CFP is one of the NP-hard combinational problems. Although some of the optimization algorithms can nd the optimal solution for small- and medium-sized problems, they will suer from the disadvantage that the memory and computational time requirements are extremely high and increase exponentially as the problem size increases. On the other hand, the objective of CFP in the real world is multiple, such as minimizing the part ows between cells and within cells, maximizing cell and machine utilization, and minimizing machine investments, etc. GAs are capable of dealing with a multi-objective problem and searching large

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Multi-objective cell formation problem

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regions of the solutions space while being less susceptible to becoming trapped in local optima. In this paper, we propose an ecient GA to solve the multi-objective cell formation problem partially adopting Falkenauers (1998) grouping genetic algorithm (GGA), which is an extension of general GAs. In section 2, we rst review the research on the cell formation problem with genetic algorithms, and the improvements obtained with GGA that are better than those obtained with general GAs are presented. In section 3, a model for the multi-objective cell formation problem is proposed, and the particular GGA is explained step by step in section 4. Section 5 gives some numerical examples and compares studies. Conclusions are summarized in section 6.

2. A review of the cell formation problem with genetic algorithms Since the genetic algorithm (GA) was introduced by Holland (1975), it has been widely used in the eld of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) design. Pierreval et al. (2003) reviewed the implementations of GAs in CMS such as the cell formation problem (CFP) and the facility layout problem. Dimopoulos and Zalzala (2000) carried out a broader review in the area of manufacturing, which is quite a wide area. The rst GA-based solution for the CFP was developed by Venugopal and Narendran (1992b). They modeled the CFP with minimization of the total cell load variation and intercell part ows as an objective function and applied GA encoding to the problem on a machinecell string with a given total number of manufacturing cells. An important aspect we are interested in is the application of GAs, especially how the CFP is encoded and how the GA operation is applied. The general procedure of GAs in the special case of the CFP is to encode the problem into the machinecell string and partcell string or a combination of both strings. For example (see gure 1), for a machinepart grouping problem with 10 parts and six machines in three cells, the chromosome (C1 C2 C2 C1 C3 C2 C2 C3 C1 C3: C3 C2 C2 C1 C1 C1) shows that parts 1, 4, 9 and machines 4, 5, 6 are assigned to cell 1, parts 2, 3, 6, 7 and machines 2, 3 to cell 2 and parts 5, 8, 10 and machine 1 to cell 3. It is obvious that the length of the chromosome is equal to the sum of the total numbers of parts and machines. The part-grouping problem is represented as well as the machine-grouping problem. The same example is given by replacing the word
10 Parts 6 Machines

P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 C1 C2 C2 C1 C3 C2 C2 C3 C1 C3 C3 C2 C2 C1 C1 C1 C1:P1,P4,P9;M4,M5,M6 Chromosome C2:P2,P3,P6,P7;M2,M3 C3:P5,P8,P10;M1

Figure 1.

Chromosome of a general GA.

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machine with part in the above machine-grouping example and the chromosome length is equal to the total number of parts. In fact, since this method was rst used by Venugopal and Narendran (1992b), it has commonly been used in most studies, such as Gupta et al. (1995, 1996), Hwang and Sun (1996), Joines et al. (1996), Su and Hsu (1996), Alsultan and Fedjki (1997), Lee et al. (1997), Gravel et al. (1998), Moon and Gen (1999), Moon and Kim (1999), Lee-Post (2000), Zhao and Wu (2000), Arzi et al. (2001), Asokan et al. (2001), Onwubolu and Mutingi (2001), Uddin and Shanker (2002) and Zolfaghari and Liang (2002). Billo et al. (1996) showed another encoding method that contains a string of part numbers, where cell locations are identied with a vertical slash (|) that designates the cuto for the part numbers comprising the cell. Such an example appears as 231|546|978. It still restrains the number of cells. Rao et al. (1999) and Wicks and Reasor (1999) encoded the machinecell chromosome into 01 combinations, in which the predetermined number of cells is needed. Cheng et al. (1998) and Mak et al. (2000) formulated the CFP as a traveling salesman problem (TSP). The chromosome is a random permutation of machines numbers and parts numbers, but the cell partition was not mentioned. Su and Hsu (1996) pointed out that most previous investigations stipulate that (a) the total number of manufacturing cells should be known in advance, and (b) the manufacturing cell size and the upper and lower bounds of the number of machines in each manufacturing cell should be specied for solving the machinecell group problem. Otherwise, a mathematical model having feasible or satisfactory solutions cannot be constructed. However, knowing the actual number of manufacturing cells is relatively dicult before the CMS design is determined. According to our review, most previous researchers decided on the number of cells based on their experience or compared several sets of numbers of cells from 1 to the maximum number, which is equal to the total number of machines, and made a choice on the best result. Most recently, the grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) has become popular because of its eciency in combinational grouping problems such as the bin packing problem, the graph colouring problem, and also the CFP. The GGA was introduced by Falkenauer (1998), and we would like to say that the GGA is a group-oriented algorithm. The GGA diers from the classic GA in two important aspects. First, a special encoding scheme is used in order to make the relevant structures of the grouping problems become genes in chromosomes. Second, given the encoding scheme, special genetic operators suitable for the chromosomes are used. These dierences ensure that the GGA can solve the CFP without predetermination of the number of cells. De Lit et al. (2000) rst solved the CFP using the GGA. Brown and Sumichrast (2001) and Meents (2001) showed the GGA encoding of a chromosome with an indeterminate number of cells and number of machines within the same cell, although De Lit et al. (2000) constrained the size of the cell not to exceed the maximum number for their purpose. According to the GGA, the same CFP as in gure 1 can be encoded as in gure 2, which consists of three sections: the cell section, the machine section, and the part section. Note that the lengths of the machine and part sections are both constant for all chromosomes and depend on the numbers of machines and parts, respectively, in the problem. The cell section, however, may vary in length and depends on the number of cells into which the parts and machines are grouped, thus GGA can solve the CFP without predetermination of the number of cells. For a given CFP with a total number of M machines and N parts, there is no point in grouping all machines and

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Multi-objective cell formation problem

Cell section Part section C2 M2, M3 C1 M4, M5, M6 P1, P4, P9 C3 M1 P5, P8, P10

833

Machine section

P2, P3, P6, P7

Figure 2.

Chromosomes of the GGA.

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parts into only one cell or one in each cell. Therefore, the possible number of cells C can be dened as 2 C min(M1, P1). It is obvious that the possible number of cells for the above example (gure 2) with six machines and 10 parts is 2 C 5. Another advantage of the GGA, we have to say, is its eciency in the genetic operation. For some of the general GAs for the CFP, crossover operators may easily create illegal partitions because of predetermination of the number of cells. For example, Parent 1 : 1 1 2 j 3 2 3 1, Child 1 : 1 1 2 j 2 1 1 2, Parent 2 : 3 1 3 j 2 1 1 2, Child 2 : 3 1 3 j 3 2 3 1:

In the above example, Child 1 lost cell number 3. This oset will be considered as illegal for a predetermination of three cells, although it is legitimate for the real partition on machines or parts. It is obvious that the general GAs will lose eciency due to lack of exibility with a variable number of cells. The GGA introduces special genetic operators, which are suitable for chromosomes with three sections of parts, machines and cells. It is capable of dealing with a variable number of cells.

3. Mathematical model According to the above section, the most fundamental objectives for the CFP are minimization of intercell ows and cell load variation, or their combinations. We can benet from lower parts transfer cost due to the minimization of intercell ows and higher within-cell machine utilization due to the minimization of cell load variation. Several measures have been used to evaluate the objective function of the CFP, such as grouping eciency proposed by Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1986), group ecacy by Kumar and Chandrasekharan (1990) and bond energy by Miltenburg and Zhang (1991). However, these measures are only suitable for those CFPs whose machinepart ow chart is a 01 matrix denoting the manufacturing relationship between machines and parts, without considering other important design factors such as processing time, production requirements and available time on machine in a given period, etc. In our research, we propose to minimize intercell ows and cell load variation in a consideration of the processing time, production requirements and available time on machine in a given period. The mathematical model is given as 1. Cell load variation: f1
p m X c X X i 1 l 1 j 1

xil yjl wij ajl 2 :

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2. Intercell ows: f2
p c X m X X l 1 i 1 j 1

Nj rij 1 xil yjl :

3. Multi-objective function: minimize F  f1 1  f2 , 4. subject to 3

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c X l 1 c X l 1

xil 1

for i 1, 2, . . . , m,

yjl 1

for j 1, 2, . . . , p,

m X i 1 p X j 1

xil ! 1 for l 1, 2, . . . , c,

yjl ! 1

for l 1, 2, . . . , c, j 1, 2, . . . , p; l 1, 2, . . . , c,

7 8

xil , yjl 2 f0, 1g m p c tij Ti Nj W R X Y

for i 1, 2, . . . , m;

where the total number of machines the total number of parts the total number of cells the processing time (hour/piece) of part j on machine i the available time on machine i in a given period of time the production requirement of part j in a given period of time [wij] is an m p machinepart incidence matrix, where wij is workload on machine i induced by part j and is equal to (tij Nj)/Ti [rij] is an m p matrix which expresses the manufacturing relationship between machine i and part j, where rij 1 if tij > 0, 0 otherwise [xil] is an m c cell membership matrix, where xil 1 if machine i is in cell l and 0 otherwise [yjl] is a p c cell membership matrix, where yjl 1 if part j is in cell l and 0 otherwise; for given W and X, Y can be obtained as E W0 X, [ejl] is a p c matrix; nd the positions of the maximum volumes in every column of E, then yejl Max 1, otherwise yjl 0 [ajl] is a p c matrix of the average intracell processing time for part j in cell l, where Pm xil yjl wij ajl i1 Pm i1 xil the weight factor to balance the intercell ows and cell load variation, and 0  1.

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According to the above model, for a given machinepart incidence matrix wij and a given weight factor , the result we want to obtain is the number of cells c, machinecell membership xil and partcell membership yjl after cell formation. Equation (1) shows the calculation of the cell load variation and equation (2) the intercell ows. Equation (3) is our objective function for our cell formation problem, which is balanced by weight factor . Constraints (4) and (5) ensure that each machine and part can only be assigned into one cell. Constraints (6) and (7) ensure that each cell must contain at least one machine and one part, respectively. Constraint (8) states that xil and yjl are 01 binary decision variables.

4. The grouping genetic algorithm The grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) performs the same general procedures as all GAs, such as initialization, selection, crossover operation, mutation operation, etc. For our multi-objective CFP, in order to enforce the algorithm to function in an ecient way, eorts are made such as (1) perfect the initialization, (2) tness evaluation to prevent illusionary solutions, (3) improvement to prevent simple cloning in the crossover operator, and (4) three kinds of mutation operators to avoid trapping into local optima. 4.1 Initialization of population In this research, the initial population of individuals is generated randomly. From the dened mathematical model, the partcell membership yjl can be concluded for a given machinepart incidence matrix wij and machinecell membership xil, thereby we only introduce the machine section and cell section in our chromosome representation. Also, considering that there is no point in grouping all machines and parts into only one cell or one in each cell, the operation is given as follows: Step 1. Generate the number of cells (c) randomly, where c is a random positive integer and 2 c m 1 if m < p, otherwise 2 c p 1. Step 2. Select c machines and group these machines one by one into c cells randomly (this step ensures that each cell must contain at least one machine). Step 3. Group the remaining m c machines into c cells randomly. Step 4. Permute the generated number of cells (c) randomly, and then combine the two parts of machine and cell to create the chromosome. For example, in the 10 machine cell formation problem, one chromosome can be generated by the above operation as follows. (1) Step 1: the number of cells is generated randomly as four. (2) Step 2: select four machines randomly and assign these machines one by one into four cells. A probable solution is that machines 2, 5, 6, and 10 are selected and grouped into cells 14; machinecell (MC) herein is MC1 {2}, MC2 {5}, MC3 {6}, and MC4 {10}. (3) Step 3: group the remaining machines 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9 into cells 14 randomly; the machinecell may be MC1 {2, 3, 4}, MC2 {1, 5, 9}, MC3 {6, 8} and MC4 {7, 10}. (4) Step 4: a random permutation of cell number 4 is 1, 2, 4 and 3, and then the nal random generated individual is shown in gure 3.

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Cell section Machine section

Figure 3.

3 6,8

2,3,4 1,5,9 7,10

Example of a chromosome.

4.2 Fitness function In equation (3), the multi-objective function is to minimize F. The original GAs implemented the survival of the tness strategy in their search for better solutions for the maximization problem. For the minimization problem, we multiply F by 1. The tness function is Fitness  f1 1  f2 : 9

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There is a possibility that, in our further crossover operator and mutation operator, the ospring chromosomes would group all machines into one cell or one in each cell (although those individuals are avoided in our initialization). It is obvious that f2 will equal 0 if all machines are grouped into one cell and f1 will be 0 otherwise. In fact, since cell load variation f1 and intercell ows f2 are on a dierent scale and the weight factor  is determined a priori, if f1 or f2 is 0, an illusionary good tness value, even better than normal, would be created. According to our data tests, the illusionary good tness will mislead the CFP into a pointless solution as all machines are grouped into one cell or one in each cell. This problem does not seem more important than those encountered using general GAs, because the number of cells was predetermined. In our research, we give a penalty to the illusionary solutions (all machines are grouped into one cell or one in each cell): Fitnessillusionary solutions !, where ! is a positive number as large as it can be. 10

4.3 Selection operation The selection of individuals to produce successive generations plays an extremely important role in a genetic algorithm. A probabilistic selection is performed based upon the individuals tness such that the better individuals have an increased chance of being selected. An individual in the population can be selected more than once with all individuals in the population having a chance of being selected to reproduce into the next generation. Holland (1975) developed the roulette wheel, which was the rst selection method. Others, such as roulette wheels extensions, scaling techniques, tournaments, elitist models, and ranking methods (Goldberg 1989, Michalewicz 1992), also exist. In this research, we adopt Joines and Houcks (1994) normalized geometric ranking scheme, which allows for minimization and a negative tness value. In their scheme, individuals in the population are ranked from the best to the worst with ranking r, according to their tness value, and then each individual is assigned a probability of selection (Ps) based upon the normalized geometric distribution. The denition of Ps is Ps q0 1 qr1 , 11

Multi-objective cell formation problem

Old population Individual ID. 1 2 3 4 Fitness -4.0300 -4.2167 -4.2167 -1.6200 -6.2525 -6.1625 -3.1900 -3.0900 -4.5900 -4.6267 Rank 4 5 5 1 10 9 3 2 7 8 Selection with q = 0.1 Selected population Individual ID. 2 4 5 10 6 8 8 8 8 7 Fitness -4.2167 -1.6200 -6.2525 -4.6267 -6.1625 -3.0900 -3.0900 -3.0900 -3.0900 -3.1900

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5 6 7 8 9 10

Figure 4.

Example of a selection operation.

where q is the probability of selecting the best individual, r is the rank of the individual, where 1 is the best, pz is the population size, and q q0 : 1 1 qpz In equation (11), only the variable q needs to be predetermined. An example of a selection procedure with a population of 10 individuals is shown in gure 4. We nd that the normalized geometric ranking scheme yields the best individual to be selected for the reproduction of the next population. We hope it will be helpful in improving the eciency of our algorithm. 4.4 Crossover operator We partially adopt Falkenauers GGA (1998). The crossover operator is given as follows with an example (a 10 machine cell formation problem) given in gure 5. Step 1. Select two crossing sites randomly, determining the crossing sections, which stand by the cell group in each of the parents (see gure 5(a)). Step 2. Inject the contents of the crossing section of the second parent at the rst crossing site of the rst parent (see gure 5(b)). Step 3. Eliminate all machines (underlined in gure 5(b)) now occurring twice in the rst parent, and then eliminate the empty cell in the rst parent (see gure 5(c)). Step 4. Apply steps 2 and 3 to generate the second child (see gure 5(d )). The normalized geometric ranking selection operation used here has the tendency that an individual with good tness in the population can be selected more than once

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1 2,3,4

2 1,5,9

4 7,10

3 6,8

3 2,6,7,8

2 3,4,9

1 1,5,10

(a) Select crossing sections

1 2,3,4 3 2,6,7,8 2 1,5,9 4 7,10 3 6,8 1 3,4 3 2,6,7,8 2 1,5,9 4 10

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(b) Injection
2 1,5,9 4 7,10 3 2,6,8 2 3,4

(c) Eliminate empty cell

(d) Second child

Figure 5.

Crossover operator.

3 6,8

4 6,8

2,3,4 1,5,9 7,10

1,5,9 2,3,4 7,10

Parent 1 Parent 2 (a) Two parents with the same machine groups
1 2 2 4 3 6,8 1 2 2 3

2,3,4 7,10

1,5,9 7,10

2,3,4 7,10

1,5,9 6,8

(b) Injection

(c) Child with the same machine groups as its parents

Figure 6.

Inecient crossover operation.

to reproduce the next generation (see gure 4). One special case in our cell formation is shown in gure 6. If the machine sections of two parents are the same (that is also to say, those machines are grouped into the same cells), no matter whether the cell sections of the two parents are the same or not, their ospring will always be the same as those two parents with the above crossover operator. We do not expect a phenomenon like simple cloning because it reduces the eciency of our algorithm. According to our test, we nd that the repetitions of the same individual with better tness will be overfull as the generations grow, and those excess repetitions will induce trapping into local optima. We propose a check procedure before the crossover operator, which not only keeps the individual with good tness alive, but also prevents overlling of good individuals. Step 0. Compare the two selected parents. If machines are grouped into the same cells, copy one of the parents as one child; another child is created randomly with the initialization operation. And then break out from the crossover operator, else go to step 1.

Multi-objective cell formation problem

1 2,3,4 2 1,5,9 4 7,10 3 6,8 1 2,3,4 2 1,5,9 4 7,6 3 10,8

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(a) Swap mutation

1 2,3,4 2 4 3 6,8 1 2,3,4 2 1,5,9 3 6,7,8,10

1,5,9 7,10

(b) Combination mutation

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1 2,3,4

3 6,8

1 2,3,4

2 1

5 5,9

4 7,10

3 6,8

1,5,9 7,10

(c) Division mutation

Figure 7.

Mutation operators.

4.5 Mutation operator Dierent from classical GAs, the mutation operator works with groups in order to avoid trapping in local optima. Basically, we apply three kinds of mutation operators in our algorithm: (i) a swap mutation operator, by which the machines in dierent cells are swapped (see gure 7(a)); (ii) a combination mutation operator, by which dierent cells are combined into one cell (see gure 7(b)); and (iii) a division mutation operator, by which one cell is divided into two cells (see gure 7(c)). 4.6 Proposed GGA for CFP The grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) for our cell formation problem (CFP) is then given as Step 1. Set t 0, and initialize the population Zt with population size pz. Step 2. Evaluate Zt. Step 3. Select chromosomes from Zt by the normalized geometric ranking scheme with assigned probability of selection (Ps). In this research, we assign the probability of selecting the best individual q instead of Ps. Step 4. Recombine Zt with the crossover and mutation operator, where the crossover rate is Pc and the mutation rate is Pm. Step 5. Find the best chromosome in Zt, and set t t 1. Step 6. If t<termination time Tend, go to step 2, else stop.

5. Numerical examples We compiled our algorithm in Matlab6.0 and all the numerical example were tested on a PC with an Intel Pentium III 1 GHz processor, 256 M memory and Win2000 Professional Operating System. In order to demonstrate our method, we rst introduce a simple CFP example, and then we certify the result from Venugopal and Narendran (1992b). By a comparison with Venugopal and Narendran (1992a)

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and other benchmark examples, we show that our method is capable of dealing with CFP more eciently and exibly without predetermining the number of cells. 5.1 A simple example The simple example is a CFP with ve machines and eight parts, and the result after cell formation is shown in gure 8(b). Machines 1, 4 and 5, parts 1, 4 and 7 are grouped into the same cell and machines 2 and 3, parts 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 are grouped into another cell, and the total number of cells is two for the optimal solution. The performance of the simple CFP is shown in gure 9 and the parameters are given as pz 10, q 0.1, Pc 0.6, Pm 0.2,  0.5, and Tend 20. From the gure of performance, the optimal solution of gure 8(b) is found in the seventh generation, and the CPU time is 0.8510 s. The initial population and end population are listed in table 1. The presentation of each chromosome is simplied as a structural formula, where the denominator represents the machines grouped in the same cell, and the numerator represents the cells. Of the end populations in table 1, chromosomes 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8 denitely represent the same cell formation for the simple CFP example. The optimal solution was found in the seventh generation, although the sequence of cells (such as chromosomes 1 and 8), the sequence of machines (such as chromosomes 1 and 4), or both (such as chromosomes 1 and 6) are dierent. Hereby we can further recognize that
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 0.3 0 0 0.4 0 0 0.5 0 2 0 0.3 0.1 0 0.5 0.2 0 0.6 3 0 0.3 0.3 0 0.1 0.2 0 0.2 4 0.6 0 0 0.7 0 0 0.8 0 5 0.1 0 0 0.2 0 0 0.3 0
0 1 4 7 2 3 5 6 8 1 0.3 0.4 0.5 0 0 0 0 0 4 0.6 0.7 0.8 0 0 0 0 0 5 0.1 0.2 0.3 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0.3 0.1 0.5 0.2 0.6 3 0 0 0 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.2

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(a) 58 CFP before grouped

Figure 8.
0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 Fittness -2 -2.5 -3 -3.5 -4 -4.5 0 2 4 6 8 10

(b) 58 CFP after grouped

Simple CFP before and after grouping.

Best fitness found in each generation

Average fitness for each generation

12

14

16

18

20

Generation

Figure 9.

Example of the performance of a simple CFP.

Multi-objective cell formation problem Table 1. Sample population of the simple CFP example. End population F 2.0842 3.0900 1.6575 4.7992 4.3800 4.8167 5.8125 4.7992 5.8125 5.7225 Chromosome
1 2 23 145 1 3 2 23 4 15 1 2 23 145 1 2 145 23 1 3 2 4 4 2 15 3 2 1 145 23 1 2 3 23 15 4 2 2 23 145 3 2 1 5 123 4 1 2 3 145 2 3

841

Initial population No. 1 2 3 4 Chromosome

1 2 45 123 4 3 2 1 5 23 4 1 1 3 2 2 45 13 1 2 345 12 1 3 2 2 45 1 2 2 34 125 2 3 1 4 3 5 12 4 2 1 12 345 1 4 3 2 12 5 3 4 4 2 1 3 3 25 1 4

f1 1.1683 0.1800 0.3150 1.5983 0.7600 1.6333 0.6250 1.5983 0.6250 0.4450

f2 3 6 3 8 8 8 11 8 11 11

f1 0.5600 0.2400 0.5600 0.5600 0.0600 0.5600 0.2400 0.5600 0.7933 0.3800

f2 0 3 0 0 8 0 3 0 6 5

F 0.2800 1.6200 0.2800 0.2800 4.0300 0.2800 1.6200 0.2800 3.3967 2.6900

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5 6 7 8 9 10

the GGA is a group-oriented solution method compared to the general GAs, and the necessity of the check procedure is again indicated before the crossover operator based on the normalized geometric ranking selection scheme. 5.2 Comparative studies In the research of Venugopal and Narendran (1992b), a CFP with 15 machines and 30 parts was tested using GAs. The same example was also given in Venugopal and Narendran (1992a) solved by simulated annealing (SA). They predetermined three cells for their nal solution without an explanation of how the number of cells was determined. The same result is obtained by our method, with the weight factor , balancing the intercell ows and cell load variation, varying between 0.700 and 0.800. The optimal solution was obtained that the number of cells is three. This result illustrates the eectiveness of our algorithm in both grouping machines into cells and deciding on the number of cells. The nal cell formation and its performance are shown in gure 10. Also in section 4.4 on the crossover operator, we introduced a check procedure (step 0) before the crossover operator which signicantly improved the eciency of our algorithm. A comparison without and with step 0 is shown in gures 11 and 12. In gure 11, the best solution is found in the 372nd generation, but the same result is found in the 17th generation after introducing step 0, as shown in gure 12. The eciency of our algorithm is improved signicantly after the introduction of step 0. We further compared 12 problems from Venugopal and Narendran (1992a), as shown in table 2, and the relative parameters for each case are listed in table 3. We obtained the same results for the rst 10 problems and improved results for the last two. In order to test the applicability of our algorithm for large-scale problems, we tested the datasets of benchmark examples from the published literature.

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0 4 5 6 8 9 1 2 3 7 10 11 12 13 14 15

2 0 .2 0 .2 0 .8 1 .1 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

5 0 .3 0 .3 0 .9 1 .2 0 .5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

12 0 0 .4 1 0 .3 0 .6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

14 0 .7 0 .5 0 .7 0 .8 0 .9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

16 0 .6 0 .7 0 .2 0 .3 0 .5 0 0 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

18 0 .2 0 .8 0 .3 0 .9 0 .6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

20 0 .4 0 .9 0 .4 0 .2 0 .7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

22 0 .4 0 .6 0 .5 0 .3 0 .8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

26 0 .5 0 .8 0 .6 0 .4 0 .9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

27 0 .6 0 .2 0 .8 0 .5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .4 0 .6 0 .8 0 .6 0 .3 0 0 0 0

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 .3 0 .5 0 .7 0 .9 0 .2 0 .3 0 0 0 0

6 0 0 0 0 0 0 .6 0 .7 0 .2 0 .3 0 .3 0 0 0 0 0

7 0 0 0 0 0 0 .6 0 .3 0 .4 0 .5 0 .9 0 0 0 0 0

8 0 0 0 0 0 0 .2 0 .4 0 .9 0 .5 0 .2 0 0 0 0 0

9 0 0 0 0 0 0 .2 0 .3 0 .6 0 .7 0 .3 0 0 0 0 0

10 0 0 0 0 0 0 .5 0 .6 0 .2 0 .3 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0

11 0 0 0 0 0 0 .7 0 .8 0 .2 0 .5 0 .5 0 0 0 0 0

17 0 0 0 0 0 0 .4 0 .9 0 .3 0 .6 0 .6 0 0 0 0 0

19 0 0 0 0 0 0 .6 0 .2 0 .5 0 .9 0 .8 0 0 0 0 0

4 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .3 0 0 0 0 .6 0 .7 0 .2 0 .5

13 0 .5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .3 0 .7 0 .5 0 .6 0 .7

15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .4 0 .8 0 .6 0 .9

21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .5 0 .9 0 .8 0 0

23 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .9 0 .9 0 .5 0 .3

24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .2 0 .3 0 .3 0 .4 0

25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .5 0 .5 0 .4 0 .6 0 .7

28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .6 0 .5 0 .5 0 .8 0 .9

29 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .7 0 .6 0 .7 0 .2 0 .3

30 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .8 0 .7 0 .8 0 .8 0 .4

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Figure 10. 15 30 CFP result.

Multi-objective cell formation problem

0 -1000 -2000 -3000 Fittness -4000 -5000 Best fitness found in each generation

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-6000 -7000 -8000 0 200 400 600 800

Average fitness for each generation

1000 1200 Generation

1400

1600

1800

2000

Figure 11. 15 30 CFP performance without step 0.

0 -1000 -2000 -3000 Fittness -4000 -5000 -6000 -7000 -8000 0 10 20 30 40

Best fitness found in each generation

Average fitness for each generation

50 60 Generation

70

80

90

100

Figure 12. 15 30 CFP performance with step 0.

However, all these problems are only ow charts of 01 matrices denoting the manufacturing relationship between machines and parts. Other important design factors such as processing time, production requirements, and available time on machine in a given period are not considered. For a comparison and an ability test of our proposed algorithm, we assume that all wij of workloads on machine i induced by part j are 1 s. Using this assumption, the mathematical model dened in section 3 can be adopted for the machinepart ow charts of 01 matrices without any amendments. As the nal cell formation is obtained by our method, we then measure the solution with grouping eciency  (%) and grouping ecacy (%), which are usually introduced when comparing examples. For the compared examples with cell partitions, we also calculated the two measurements of the cell load variation f1 and intercell ows f2 dened in our model. In fact, the intercell ow f2 of our measurement is equal to the number of exceptional elements of the diagonal blocked

844 Table 2.

K. Yasuda et al. Comparison of our results with those of Venugopal and Narendran (1992a). Venugopal and Narendrans (1992a) SA Our GGA NC 2 3 3 3 4 4 5 3 4 2 5 6 f1 0.5600 0.1942 0.4667 0.6283 1.4117 1.4750 1.6450 7.3160 0.4758 0.7392 0.4481 1.6923 f2 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 17 18 32

Problem 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Size 58 99 9 10 8 14 11 16 10 20 14 20 15 30 7 11 8 20 12 19 20 20

NC 2 3 3 3 4 4 5 3 4 2 4 4

f1 0.5600 0.1942 0.4667 0.6283 1.4117 1.4750 1.6450 7.3160 0.4758 0.7392 0.5300 1.7924

f2 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 17 18 32

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NC, number of cells.

Table 3. Problem 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Population size 10 20 20 20 30 30 40 40 20 20 40 40

Parameters for comparison results of table 2. q 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 Pc 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.9 0.9 Pm 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.4  0.500 0.910 0.500 0.500 0.500 0.500 0.500 0.800 0.875 0.965 0.955 0.954 Tend 20 100 100 100 100 100 150 100 100 100 150 300 Gen 9 12 15 23 12 11 12 17 15 22 11 27 CPU time (s) 0.8510 11.6070 13.6200 15.7630 36.6830 42.0110 193.3580 187.3200 12.0262 15.4620 197.5650 919.2220

Gen: generation of the optimal solution found.

01 matrix. Comparisons with ZODIAC by Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989), with TSP-GA by Cheng et al. (1998) and with GA by Joines et al. (1996) are listed in table 4. In table 4, for problem 1, we obtained a signicant result, which is better than all other results in the comparison. Since problems 25 and 9 are better-constructed examples, all the results fall in the same range. For problem 6, our result outperforms ZODIAC very well, but TSP-GA by Cheng et al. (1998) is a little better than ours. For problems 7 and 8, although the intercell ows are increased by 8.3% and 11.4%, the cell load variations are improved by 42.3% and 56.6%. On the other hand, even though similar results were obtained by Jiones et al. (1996), who found the best solutions in the 1134th, 1637th, 2192nd, 1789th and 5682nd generations of GA for problems 15 and 9, we found the best solutions in the 24th, 35th, 57th, 60th and 112th generations, respectively.

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Table 4. ZODIAC No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Problem King and Nakornchai (1982) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1989) Chandrasekharan and Rajagopalan (1987) Size 16 43 24 40 1 24 40 2 24 40 3 24 40 4 24 40 5 24 40 6 24 40 10 7 40 100 10 8 8 7 7 7 NC 5 

Comparisons with the benchmark examples. Cheng et al.s GA f1 f2 NC  f1 f2 NC 4 Joines et al.s GA  f1 f2 NC 5  Our GGA f1 f2

80.20 53.76 45.2 31 NA 79.42 53.89 NA NA 100 0 0 NA 100 100 0 0

51.97 49.26 54.0 26 100 0 0

80.22 55.43 43.3 24 100 0 0 Multi-objective cell formation problem

7 100

7 100 7

7 100 7 7 7 8

95.20 85.11 14.9 10 NA 95.20 85.11 NA NA

95.08 85.10 NA 11 NA NA NA NA

95.20 85.11 14.9 10 90.84 73.03 20.7 19 85.04 73.51 24.4 20 79.98 48.98 41.5 48 87.38 45.0 32.5 65 81.02 41.9 24.2 68 95.10 84.03 58.3 36

90.84 73.03 20.7 19 NA 90.84 73.03 NA NA NA 85.04 73.51 24.4 20 NA NA NA NA NA 7

85.04 73.51 NA 20 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

77.31 20.42 55.9 51 NA 83.75 49.37 NA NA NA 72.43 18.23 56.3 60 NA 85.29 44.67 NA NA NA 69.33 17.61 55.8 61 NA 81.10 42.50 NA NA NA 95.07 83.92 58.3 36 NA 95.10 84.03 NA NA 10

NA NA 12 NA NA 12 10

84.03 NA 36

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5.3 Discussion of weight factor a In research on the multi-objective CFP, the decision makers (DMs) used a weight factor to trade o each individual objective with their preferences. According to section 2, there is no research indicating how the weight factor works. In fact, it plays a very important role, as do other parameters in our research. A dicult problem for the DM is the assignment of his preferences to real weighted values. We dene a step length d for the variation of , which is normally between [0, 1]. It is easy to understand that d has to be as small as possible to obtain precise ranges. If it is too large, individual solutions might not be found. On the other hand, if d is too small, the number of possible solutions increases and the required computer processing time becomes long, leading to a lack of eciency. For our special case of the CFP, minimization both of the cell load variation and the intercell ows, we dene d as a variable length: (     t 1  t 2   dt min  NCt1 NCt2  ,     t 1  t 2   t 1 , f f1t2  1  )   t 1  t 2   t 1  ; f f2t2  2

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t t1 dt if the DM prefers the cell load variation to the intercell ows, else t t1 dt; t 1, 2, . . . ,T, the total times tested. Usually, the rst two start points of min and max are given with a large dierence, which means that either the intercell ows or the cell load variation is preferred. In fact, if we release the penalty to the tness in equation (10), min and max will lead to illusionary solutions, in which all machines are grouped into one cell or one in each cell, which we explained in section 4.2. Since 0  1, it is obvious that 0<max min<1. In table 2, the intercell ows f2 for problems 1, 37 can be optimized to 0, which means that machines and parts can be grouped into completely isolated cells, i.e., these examples are better constructed. These perfect solutions allow each part family to be fully processed in one cell. Thus the inuence of weight factor  for these problems is not considered. The tested values of  for other problems are listed in table 5. The statistical analyses of the listed data are presented in gure 13. In this gure we introduce the moving average analysis of the weight factor  to the number of cells NC, cell load variation f1 and intercell ows f2 for six problems in table 5. We can see that NC, f1 and f2 vary drastically when the weight factors  are between 0.8000 and 1.000. From table 5 and gure 13, we conclude that the weight factor  determines the number of cells for the optimal solution better than it functions with respect to grouping machines into dierent cells. In other words, if the number of cells is decided a priori, the weight factor  will vary within a relatively small range. It also indicates that the GGA can solve the CFP with more exibility than the general GAs for the DM. For the comparative studies of the 01 matrices examples in table 4, we also conclude that the weight factor  mainly ranges from 0.4000 to 0.6000, if the design factors for the processing time, production requirements, and available time on machine in a given period are not considered. We omit the statistical procedures and results, because we are considering CFPs in the real world, and we recommend the range 0.8001.000 for the CFP in practice.

Multi-objective cell formation problem Table 5.

Problem 2  0.910 0.500 0.890 0.900 0.920 0.930 0.940 0.950 0.960 0.970 0.980 0.990 8 0.800 0.500 0.600 0.700 0.900 9 0.875 0.500 0.850 0.860 0.870 0.880 0.885 0.890 0.900 10 0.965 0.500 0.900 0.950 0.970 0.975 0.980 11 0.500 0.900 0.920 0.945 0.950 0.955 0.960 0.965 0.980 12 0.500 0.900 0.925 0.940 0.945 0.950 0.952 0.954 0.956 0.960 0.970 NC 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 6 3 2 2 3 5 4 2 3 3 3 4 5 6 6 2 2 2 2 2 3 4 4 2 2 2 3 4 5 6 6 6 4 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 7 12

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Solutions with changing weight factor .

f1 (%) 0.1942 () 0.6067 0.6067 0.5405 0.1942 0.1942 0.1942 0.1942 0.1942 0.1942 0.1167 0.0450 (212.4) (212.4) (178.3) () () () () () () (39.9) (76.8) f2 (%) 6 () 2 2 4 6 6 6 6 6 6 9 15 (66.7) (66.7) (33.3) () () () () () () (50.0) (150.0) Gen 12 30 14 11 12 13 16 19 15 13 23 21 17 20 22 19 25 15 14 20 22 16 25 20 23 17 22 36 24 31 26 27 22 6 15 18 13 8 11 22 11 17 35 42 35 29 33 36 24 27 25 30 39 CPU time (s) 11.6070 9.9040 10.3940 9.8340 11.3960 12.1980 12.1280 13.3090 12.9690 14.1210 16.4340 20.9500 187.3200 125.4400 138.4890 146.1200 233.9560 12.0262 8.7120 10.6050 10.8750 10.7750 13.3390 15.3930 18.8980 18.8370 15.4620 14.3100 16.5540 14.7910 14.6310 17.3650 22.9230 155.6040 119.1520 119.9220 153.8410 188.0010 197.5650 270.4480 274.9960 289.7370 428.8170 461.4530 470.8270 544.9340 540.2070 659.1580 779.1110 919.2220 942.6060 1005.0000 1580.7000

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7.3160 () 20.7460 20.7460 7.3160 5.0778 (183.6) (183.6) () (30.6)

6 () 5 5 6 24 (16.7) (16.7) () (300)

0.4758 () 1.3701 0.8794 0.8794 0.8794 0.4559 0.3257 0.1656 0.0666 (188.0) (84.8) (84.8) (84.8) (4.2) (31.5) (65.2) (86.0)

6 () 2 4 4 4 7 8 7 10 (66.7) (33.3) (33.3) (33.3) (16.7) (33.3) (16.7) (66.7)

0.7392 () 1.1366 1.1366 0.9408 0.7392 0.6204 0.3233 (53.8) (53.8) (27.3) () (11.9) (56.3)

17 () 9 9 11 17 23 35 (47.1) (47.1) (35.3) () (35.3) (105.9)

0.5300 () 1.5901 (200.0) 1.4787 1.4787 1.0455 0.5904 0.4481 0.2152 0.2152 0.2152 (178.9) (178.9) (97.3) (11.4) (15.4) (59.4) (59.4) (59.4)

18 () 2 (88.9) 3 3 9 15 18 23 23 23 (83.3) (83.3) (50) (16.7) () (27.8) (27.8) (27.8)

1.7924 () 3.6716 (104.8) 3.4410 3.4410 3.2290 3.0400 2.8270 2.6243 1.6923 1.4986 1.1366 0.3763 (92.0) (92.0) (80.1) (69.6) (57.7) (46.4) (5.6) (16.4) (36.6) (79.0)

32 () 1 (96.9) 3 3 6 9 13 17 32 34 40 61 (90.6) (90.6) (81.3) (71.9) (59.4) (46.9) () (6.3) (25) (90.6)

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Figure 13. Statistical analysis of the weight factors of table 5.

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Figure 13. Continued.

6. Conclusion In this article, we have presented a more ecient and exible method for solving the cell formation problem (CFP). The numerical examples and comparisons show that the CFP can be optimized with respect to both grouping machines into cells and deciding on the number of cells using our method. We prefer to solve the CFP from

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the viewpoint of real applications. In this research, we have considered the processing time, production requirements, and available time on machine in a given period for the two objectives, intercell ows and cell load variation, and we have discussed the importance of the weight factor  in trading-o the two objectives and deciding on the number of cells. However, we are still on the scent of two important considerations. First, in order to obtain a realistic result for the CFP, we have to consider as many design factors as we can. These factors are the operation sequences, alternative processing routes, machine investments, etc. The CFP in CMS in the real world has multi-objectives. A typical CMS design is now implemented in the following three stages (Sridhar and Rajendran 1993): 1. cell formation (CF): group the parts into part families and group the machines into machine cells by the parts production process; 2. facility layout: lay out the cells within the shop oor (i.e. intercell layout) and layout the machines within each cell (i.e. intracell layout); and 3. scheduling: schedule jobs in each cell and cells. In previous research, the above three stages were mostly isolated and implemented step by step. In fact, they inuence each other. For example, the objective of the minimization of part ows considered in the cell formation stage is also an important objective in the facility layout design stage. The minimization of the sum of its product with the distances parts move between machines and cells is the most considered objective in facility layout. Also, the cell load variation and machine utilization are generally considered in the scheduling problem. In order to optimize the objectives more accurately and achieve conceptualized goals in the real CMS, integrated approaches for the above three stages are necessary. On the other hand, from a systematic viewpoint, we have to consider the CFP with factors such as labour exibility, material control, and improvement techniques; see Irani (1999) for a more complete discussion of cellular manufacturing (CM). Second, by improving the eciency of the GA, we can obtain better optimized results for the CFP with economical computing resources. Since Venugopal and Narendran (1992a) rst implemented the GA for the CFP, it has been developed as an ecient algorithm in all kinds of combinational problems. In our research, the adopted method of the grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) is also an extension of GAs. The eort to improve the representation of GAs and their operators is also encouraged.

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Adil, G.K., Rajamani, D. and Strong, D., Cell formation considering alternate routing. Int. J. Prod. Res., 1996, 34, 13611380. Alsultan, K.S. and Fedjki, C.A., A genetic algorithm for the part family formation problem. Prod. Plan. & Con., 1997, 8, 788796. Arzi, Y., Bukchin, J. and Masin, M., An eciency frontier approach for the design of cellular manufacturing systems in a lumpy demand environment. European J. Oper. Res., 2001, 134, 346364. Askin, R.G., Cresswell, S.H., Goldberg, J.B. and Vakhara, A.J., Hamiltonian path approach to reordering the partmachine matrix for cellular manufacturing. Int. J. Prod. Res., 1991, 29, 10811100.

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