Machine-component grouping in cellular manufacturing by multidimensional scaling

A heuristic is proposed for grouping of machines and components in cellular manufacturing. The method adopts the principle of strength coefficient using multidimensional scaling. The method has been found to give efficient solutions while taking less computational time. The algorithm is tested against five existing test problems taken from the literatures and is further compared with the two most commonly cited algorithms, i.e. ranking order clustering and close neighbor algorithm.