Approaches to solve cell formation, machine layout and cell layout problem: A Review

Cell formation, machine layout and cell layout problems in cellular manufacturing system are NP-Complete optimization problems. Good cell formation & layout design in cellular manufacturing system is achieved by finding optimum or near-optimum solutions of these problems, which substantially reduces manufacturing cost and time. Many approaches have been advocated by researchers to obtain better cell formation & layout design. An attempt has been done in this paper to review such approaches based on heuristics, meta-heuristics, hybrid methods and exact solution methods developed by past researchers to solve these problems. The main objective of this review paper is to find out the effective and efficient approaches by comparing them based on performance criteria, their benefits and drawbacks in solving cellular manufacturing system problems and find out future research scope in this area.