Revisiting the cell formation problem: assigning parts to production systems

Before manufacturing cells can be identified from a population of parts and machines, the parts must be carefully analysed to determine the small subset of parts that are appropriate for cellular manufacturing. When this is not done it becomes very difficult to identify the cells because the algorithms that are used have high computational requirements and high space requirements. The computational requirements and space requirements for the rank order clustering algorithm and the similarity coefficient algorithm are determined. Other algorithms that have been proposed for solving the ‘cell formation problem’ are more elaborate than these and are therefore likely have higher computational and space requirements. A procedure for assigning parts to production systems is presented in this paper. An illustrative example, taken from an actual implementation, is described to show how the procedure can be used.