Manufacturing cell formation using spreadsheets

Many algorithms have been proposed to form manufacturing cells from component routeings. Most of these methods require specialized algorithms for implementation. Some others use well known procedures such as integer programming. However, these may be difficult for practising managers to comprehend. This paper proposes a simple method that can be implemented using spreadsheet software. The method is based on similarity coefficients and a pair-wise interchange procedure. It describes the method and the spreadsheet implementation. It compares our procedure with many existing procedures using eight well-known problems from the literature. Using three evaluation measures it shows that the proposed procedure is effective. Given its simplicity and effectiveness, it may be useful to practitioners and researchers.