Design of Cellular Manufacturing using Mathematical Programming: A Comparative Study with Simulation Modelling

The problem of cell design is a very complex task with wide ranging implications for any organization. Cell design is generally understood as the problem of identifying a set of part types that are suitable for manufacturing on a group of machines. Among the many methods utilized in cell design, the distance or dissimilarity between two entries is fairly less used. The main goal of this paper is to combine different techniques such as the design and evaluation of a cellular manufacturing system. In this study, a mathematical programming model based on the Minkowski distance measure to minimize the total distance between entries is introduced. Furthermore, a hypothetical manufacturing facility with 10 machines and 15 parts is used as a case. Finally, simulation models are developed for two manufacturing systems, a new cellular manufacturing and a conventional job shop manufacturing system.