APPLYING SIMULATED ANNEALING TO A GENERALIZED CELL FORMATION PROBLEM CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE ROUTINGS AND MACHINE RELIABILITY

One of the most important steps in designing a cellular manufacturing system is cell formation which includes grouping the machines in cells and the parts as part families, so that the costs are minimized. Several aspects of the problem should be taken into account in cell formation; more specifically, machines and their reliability are among the most important issues that should be modelled correctly. Another important facet of a cellular manufacturing system is material handling cost consisting of inter-cellular and intra-cellular movement costs. In addition, setup cost may play a significant role in decision-making in many real world problems of cell formation. Obviously, cell formation cannot be completed without considering the demands for parts. Considering all these aspects of the problem in this research, a generalized model for solving cell formation problem is proposed. Exact methods, e.g., B&B, are cumbersome in solving such complex models for large-size problems. Therefore, in this paper, a modified version of simulated annealing algorithm is designed and numerical examples are provided to show that the proposed method is efficient and effective.