An analytical-iterative clustering algorithm for cell formation in cellular manufacturing systems with ordinal-level and ratio-level data

In this paper, the problem of clustering machines into cells and components into part-families with the consideration of ratio-level and ordinal-level data is dealt with. The ratio-level data is characterized by the use of workload information obtained both from per-unitprocess times and production quantity of components, and from machine capacity. In the case of ordinal-level data, we consider the sequence of operations for every component. These data sets are used in place of conventional binary data for arriving at clusters of cells and part-families. We propose a new approach to cell formation by viewing machines, and subsequently components, as 'points' in multi-dimensional space, with their coordinates defined by the corresponding elements in a Machine-Component Incidence Matrix (MCIM). An iterative algorithm that improves upon the seed solution is developed. The seed solution is obtained by formulating the given clustering problem as a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). The solutions yielded by the proposed clustering algorithm are found to be good and comparable to those reported in the literature.