A successive approximations method for a cellular manufacturing problem

The problem of interest to partition a collection of machines into production cells so that a given set of part-manufacturing requirements may be carried out optimally. In the present case transitions of parts between different cells is the only measure of machine partition goodness. The present formulation and approximate solution of this optimization problem is best described as one of successive approximations or as a one-at-a-time method. An initial cellular structure is taken and an easy part assignment optimization routine executed. With the part assignment fixed, a heuristic is employed to find an improved cell structure. These bipartite iterations continue until a convergence criterion is satisfied. Several small computer examples are provided and the straightforward requirements for large problem adaptation.