Fuzzy ART/RRR-RSS: a two-phase neural network algorithm for part-machine grouping in cellular manufacturing

In this paper an efficient methodology adopting Fuzzy ART neural network is presented to solve the comprehensive part-machine grouping (PMG) problem in cellular manufacturing (CM). Our Fuzzy ART/RRR-RSS (Fuzzy ART/ReaRRangement-ReaSSignment) algorithm can effectively handle the real-world manufacturing factors such as the operation sequences with multiple visits to the same machine, production volumes of parts, and multiple copies of machines. Our approach is based on the non-binary production data-based part-machine incidence matrix (PMIM) where the operation sequences with multiple visits to the same machine, production volumes of parts, and multiple identical machines are incorporated simultaneously. A new measure to evaluate the goodness of the non-binary block diagonal solution is proposed and compared with conventional performance measures. The comparison result shows that our performance measure has more powerful discriminating capability than conventional ones.