Cell formation considering sequence

of operations and workload

.

1
1

5
6

4
3
2

2
1

8
1

2
3

1, 2, 3 --- 1, 4, 6
4, 5, 6 --- 2, 3, 5, 7, 8
10 moves

3
2

Let Cij be the number of parts that visit machine j immediately after visiting machine i
or visiting machine i immediately visiting machine j. The Cij values can be computed
from a given machine component incidence matrix.
Let Xij = 1 if machines i and j belong to the same machine group.
Here Xij are defined for values i = 1,...,M-1 and j = i+1,..,M.
M 1 M

C 1 X

Minimize
k 1

X
i 1

ik

i 1 j i 1

j k 1

ij

ij

X kj N 1 k 1,.., M

X ij X ik X jk 1
X ij X ik X jk 1
X ij X ik X jk 1 i 1,.., M 2, j i 1,.., M 1, k j 1,.., M

X ij 0,1

The binary IP formulation has 15 variables and 63 constraints.

The optimal solution is given by X13 = X14 = X34 = X25 = X26 = X56 = 1
with objective function value = 11.

2
6

2
1

3
4

2
3

New Similarity Coefficient

Nair and Narendran (1998) introduced the following similarity coefficient between
machines i and j:

Sij

Aij
Bij

Here Aij represents the contribution of parts visiting both the machines i and j. Part k visiting

both i and j contributes 1 if it visits the machine as its first or last machine in the sequence and
contributes 2 if it is an intermediate machine. Similarly Bij represents the contribution of parts
visiting both either machine i or machine j or both. Part k contributes 1 if it visits the machine as
its first or last machine in the sequence and contributes 2 if it is an intermediate machine. The
machine groups are formed based on the Sij values.

Considering machines 1 and 2, we observe that part 6 visits both. A total of 7

parts visit either machine 1 or machine 2 or both. A12 = 2 because part 6 visits
machine 1 as first operation and visits machine 2 as fourth (last) operation. Each
contributes 1 to the A12 value. The contributions of parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 are 1,
1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1 respectively. Therefore B12 = 9 and S12 = 2/9.
Machines Jij
i-j
1-2
2/9

Machines Jij
i-j
2-3
3/9

Machines
i-j
3-5

Jij

1-3

9/10

2-4

3/6

3-6

5/10

1-4

7/9

2-5

8/12

4-5

3/11

1-5

3/11

2-6

7/12

4-6

3/12

1-6

6/13

3-4

7/8

5-6

11/16

The two machine groups are [1 3 4] and [2 5 6] respectively.

There are six inter cell moves.

Cell load data

1
2
3
4
5
6

1
.3

4
.4

5
.2

.3
.5
.4

.3

.3
.3
.2

.2
.4

.1
.2

6
.1
.3
.3
.2

.1

.2

.4

.4
.3

.3
.5

Let us assume that there are K groups (k = 1,..K). Each machine should belong to one
machine group. Let Xik = 1 if machine i belongs to cell k.
M

The cell load in cell k from part j is given by

Lkj

w X
i 1
M

ij

X
i 1

ik

ik

Z X il wij L jl
M

The total cell load variation is given by

i 1 l 1

j 1

The mathematical programming formulation (Venugopal and Narendran, 1992)

is to Minimize Z subject to
K

X
l 1

ik

X
i 1

ik

Xik = 0,1.

[1 3 4] and [2 5 6]. Find the cell load variation

for these machine cells?

The average cell load in cell 1 through part 1 is 0.8/3. The sum of loads on part 1 in
machines 1, 2 and 3 is 0.8. The average load is .8/3 = -2666. The average cell load by
the parts on the two cells are given in Table
1

.266

.1

.233

.0666

.233

.0666 .133

.233 .166

.2

.033 .1

.0666

.233

.2666

The cell load variance is given by (.3-.266)2+(.5-.266)2+(.4-.233)2+(.3-.266)2+---- = 0.47222.

For the cells [1 3 4] and [2 5 6] the variance is 0.31444.

Similarity coefficient

wjil = 1 if wji > 0 or wjl > 0.

s12 = .1/.3 7 = 0.00476.

--

.047

.42

.583

.125

.155

.047

--

.166

.166

.375

.355

.42

.166

--

.365

.2

.585

,166

.365

--

.071

.107

125

.375

.071 --

.313

.155

.355

.2

.107

--

[1 3 4] and [2 5 6]

.313