Design of cellular manufacturing systems in tandem configuration

This paper develops a cell formation approach for a class of cellular manufacturing systems in which intercell moves are restricted to flow in one direction from one cell to the cell immediately downstream, without backtracking. An optimal zero-one integer programming model is used to determine which machines and parts should be assigned to cells and to specify the relative position of the cells on the factory material flow pattern. The model subdivides the underlying manufacturing system into cells based on an intercell traffic minimization criterion and subject to machine capacity and operations sequence constraints. The model also considers part setup and run times for the evaluation of capacity requirements.