Solving machine part cell formation problem using genetic algorithm based evolutionary computing

Abstract

Machine part cell formation is the group technology problem, in which the parts with near similar machining requirements are grouped into part families and the corresponding machines into machine cells. In this paper, a genetic algorithm with a fine tuning procedure is proposed to solve the group technology problem considering only one process plan for each part. The grouping efficacy achieved by the proposed method is comparable to the existing methods in general and better for 11.42% of the datasets.