Cell formation using tabu search

We present a tabu search-based cell formation algorithm in this paper. The cell formation problem studied here is to group machines into cells such that the material movement between cells is minimized. By using a weighted graph to represent the material movement between machines, we model the cell formation problem as a graph partition problem. The algorithm solves this problem through improving a cell configuration using the tabu search technique. A binary-tree data structure and a look-ahead scheme are developed for the algorithm to increase its efficiency and effectiveness. Our computational results show that this algorithm is capable of generating very good cell configurations in moderate computational time.