A heuristic method for solving cell formation problem based on p-median model

Cellular manufacturing, which is based on group technology principles, is a well known as an effective way to increase productivity in a factory. Grouping the parts, similar in a manufacturing process, into part families and recognizing the machine cells to process the part families are the basics of cell formation problem. In this paper a new heuristic method is introduced for cell formation problem based on p-median model. Minimizing the dissimilarity coefficient between the parts is considered as an objective function. The proposed approach is compared with the well known methods in literature and the computational results are also reported

Keywords:

Cellular manufacturing , Cell formation problem , Group technology , p-median