Relative performances of similarity and dissimilarity measures

Similarity or dissimilarity coefficient is used to measure the groupability of clusters in group technology. This paper addresses the issues relating to the performance of a number of most commonly used similarity coefficients along with their important characteristics, appropriateness and applications to manufacturing and other related fields. Since all the coefficients are not suitable to evaluate all group technology problems, results collected from the available literature are compared according to their matching criteria. A new approach to measure relative performance of different similarity and dissimilarity coefficients is presented in this research. Numerical results are also presented to demonstrate the closeness of different similarity and dissimilarity coefficients.