Evolutionary approach for solving cell-formation problem in cell manufacturing

New environmental characteristics and requirements have challenged manufacturing enterprises to improve the efficiency and productivity of their production activities. Cellular manufacturing (CM) as one of the solutions to this problem, as implementation of Group technology (GT), was proposed. Performance of cellular manufacturing systems depends heavily on the cell structure. In this paper we present and evaluate a novel approach for solving the cell-formation problem based on implementation of a GA, called modified genetic algorithm (MGA). Implementation of the GA in here presented simulation model is based on Emergent Synthesis idea, of top-down problem decomposition and emerging solution from bottom-up feedback. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.