Article ID: | iaor19941060 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 31 |
Issue: | 11 |
Start Page Number: | 2623 |
End Page Number: | 2647 |
Publication Date: | Nov 1993 |
Journal: | International Journal of Production Research |
Authors: | Chen C.-Y. |
Before detailed cell design analyses, rearranging the binary (or 0-1) machine-part matrix into a compact block diagonal form (BDF) is useful for controlling combinational explosion during subsequent decision-making involving machine duplication, subcontracting, intercell layout design, etc. Several authors have shown that a compact BDF corresponds to the implicit clusters in both dimensions being expressed as row and column permutations. A traditional approach for solving this problem has been to obtain the two permutations independently by solving the permutation problem in each dimension as a (unidimensional) travelling salesman problem (TSP). This paper describes cluster first-sequence last heuristics which combine the properties of the minimal spanning tree (MST) (clusters only) and TSP (sequence only) for improved permutation generation. The BDFs obtained with these heuristics were compared with those obtained using the TSP, linear placement problem (LPP), single linkage cluster analysis (SLCA), rank order clustering (ROC) and occupancy value (OV) algorithms. The ratio of variances (