An Ant Colony Optimization Approach for the Machine-Part Cell Formation Problem

In this paper, the problem of grouping machines and parts into cells (machine-part cell formation problem) is considered with the objective of minimizing grouping efficacy. An ant colony optimization algorithm is developed to solve such problem. In the proposed algorithm, solutions are constructed in a new manner, two heuristic algorithms are used to determine part families and machine cells and the similarity between parts is used as heuristic information. The proposed algorithm is experimented on 35 test problems from the literature which shows its advantage over existing algorithms. The algorithm improves the best known values of the grouping efficacy for 5 problems.