A dissimilarity measure for solving the cell formation problem in cellular manufacturing

Cell formation (CF) is a vital aspect of the design of cellular manufacturing systems. Many similarity coefficient method (SCM)-based approaches have been proposed to solve the CF problem in the literature. However, some of these approaches have deficiencies and do not always produce proper machine groups and part families from the initial machine-part incidence matrix. This paper considers a new systematic approach that is based upon the calculation of an average voids value (AVV), which indicates the average number of newly produced voids when a pair of machine groups are combined. This approach is very simple, intuitively appealing, and overcomes many disadvantages inherent in some traditional SCM-based approaches. The AVV approach is tested against five well-known approaches in solving CF problems and the test results show that the approach is reliable and efficient.