A heuristic workload-based model to form cells by minimizing intercellular movements

A common problem of cellular manufacturing systems is the formation of part families and machine cells. The total number of inter- and intracellular movements have to be minimized because both contribute to lower productivity. Nevertheless the authors show here the intracellular movements are not so important compared with the intercellular movements. They give an efficient algorithm based on minimizing the total intercellular movements, pointing out the importance of being very careful in the selection of the key workstation of each cell. The algorithm has been tested with problems selected from the literature. The results show that in all cases there is a higher utilization rate and lower central processing unit times than other algorithms published in the past.