Development of a cell formation heuristic by considering realistic data using principal component analysis and Taguchi’s method

Over the last four decades of research, numerous cell formation algorithms have been developed and tested, still this research remains of interest to this day. Appropriate manufacturing cells formation is the first step in designing a cellular manufacturing system. In cellular manufacturing, consideration to manufacturing flexibility and production-related data is vital for cell formation. The consideration to this realistic data makes cell formation problem very complex and tedious. It leads to the invention and implementation of highly advanced and complex cell formation methods. In this paper an effort has been made to develop a simple and easy to understand/implement manufacturing cell formation heuristic procedure with considerations to the number of production and manufacturing flexibility-related parameters. The heuristic minimizes inter-cellular movement cost/time. Further, the proposed heuristic is modified for the application of principal component analysis and Taguchi’s method. Numerical example is explained to illustrate the approach. A refinement in the results is observed with adoption of principal component analysis and Taguchi’s method.