Resolve the cell formation problem in a set of three manufacturing cells

Abstract

The problem of cell formation is an NP-Hard problem, which consists of organising a group of machines and pieces in several cells. The machines are arranged in a fixed way inside the cells, and each machine has some manufacturing operation that applies in different pieces or parts. The idea of the problem is to be able to minimise the movements made by the pieces to reach the machines in the cells. For this problem, a data set has been organised using three manufacturing cells. Through the data set an experiment has been carried out that focuses on obtaining the best solution using a global search solution within 6 days for each instance. The experimental results have been able to obtain the general optimum value for a set of test instances.