A network approach to cell formation in cellular manufacturing

SUMMARY

Formation of machine cells often results in some intercellular movements between the cells. These movements cause lack of segregation among the cells. This is in conflict with the main objective of group technology which aims at independently operating cells. This paper presents a non-heuristic network approach to form manufacturing cells with minimum intercellular interactions. The machine-part matrix containing machining times is represented as a network which is subsequently partitioned by using a modified Gomory-Hu algorithm to find a minimum intercellular interaction. The modified algorithm improves the computational efficiency.