Similarity coefficient-based cell formation method considering operation sequence with repeated operations

Abstract

Cell formation is a crucial problem in the design of cellular manufacturing systems and has a decisive effect on productivity and cost. The similarity coefficient method is the most widely used to solve this problem because of its flexibility and computational efficiency. Although various similarity coefficient methods have been developed in the literature, few of these methods consider the factor of operation sequence with repeated operations, which may cause more material intercell movements. To fill this research gap, this study presents an improved similarity coefficient method for designing machine groups in the first stage. Subsequently, a modified part assignment strategy is proposed for forming cells to achieve a higher compatibility with the improved similarity coefficient method. Finally, problems from previous studies are employed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Comparison results testify that the proposed method is sensitive and efficient for solving the cell formation problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Cellular manufacturing
• cell formation
• similarity coefficient method
• operation sequence
• repeated operations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSFC [grant numbers 71971143 and 71702111], the Ministry of Education Program in Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number 20YJC630157, project name: Study on optimizing resource allocation of seru production system with bottleneck shifting under capacity sharing mechanism], the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [grant numbers 2018A030310567, 2019A1515110194 and 2020A1515010749] and the Young Innovative Talents Project (Humanities & Social Sciences) from the Education Bureau of Guangdong Province [grant number 2017WQNCX142].