Minimizing intercellular part movements in manufacturing cell formation

When using the machine grouping approach for designing cellular manufacturing cells, improper machine assignment commonly arises resulting in higher intercellular movement of parts. The objective of this paper is therefore to examine the cause of such a problem and to propose a workable optimal solution for it. A machine grouping algorithm that is based in the new machine unit concept is developed and the solution is proven to be optimal at each stage. A comparison of the proposed model with two existing algorithms is presented, followed by a discussion on the behaviour of machine cell formation.