A MATHEMATICAL MODEL AND HEURISTIC PROCEDURE FOR CELLULAR LAYOUT

Facility layout design aims to arrange facilities within the shop-floor in the most efficient arrangement, according to the relations that exist among them. Although the arrangement of facilities has an important impact on the performance of manufacturing systems, especially it has a tremendous role in the efficiency of cellular manufacturing systems; it has not received the attention from the researchers in comparison to the cell formation in cellular manufacturing systems. The main aim of this paper is to develop a facility layout model in cellular manufacturing systems and to propose an algorithm to solve the model. Hence, a mathematical model has been proposed that minimizes the total material handling cost, and an algorithm that solves the model. To validate the algorithm several cases have been generated randomly, and solved by the proposed algorithm. The results have been compared to the results that have been obtained from Lingo 12.0 optimization software. The comparison of results shows the feasibility of the mathematical model and the validity of the algorithm.