A cell formation algorithm: Hypergraph approximation – cut tree

A new cell formation technique is presented and analyzed in this paper. The cell formation problem is defined using the hypergraph representation of the manufacturing systems. The proposed method approximates the hypergraph model by graphs so that the cuts are less affected by the approximation. Consequently, a Gomory–Hu cut tree or the graph approximation is obtained. The minimum cuts between all pairs of vertices are calculated easily by means of this tree, and a partition tree is produced. Our cell formation algorithm successively cuts the partition tree. The algorithm is subjected to an experimentation of randomly generated manufacturing situations. The algorithm is compared with other cell formation techniques as well.