Article ID: | iaor2006750 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 43 |
Issue: | 19 |
Start Page Number: | 4035 |
End Page Number: | 4047 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2005 |
Journal: | International Journal of Production Research |
Authors: | Wu Z., Lei D. |
Keywords: | heuristics |
Both a similarity coefficient method (SCM)-based algorithm and meta-heuristics have been widely applied to various cell formation problems; however, few studies have explored the combination of the two methods. This paper addresses a hybrid algorithm, in which, based on the initial solution produced by a new SCM-based hierarchical clustering method, a fast and effective tabu search approach is presented to solve cell formation in group technology (GT). The proposed algorithm is applied to several problems from literature and a group of the randomly generated instances with alternative process plans and compared with simulated annealing (SA) and other TS; the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is available and efficient for cell formation in generalized GT.