A Manufacturing Cell Formation Algorithm with Minimum Inter-Cell Movements

The main objective of this paper is to construct an algorithm for the formation of manufacturing cells with unbounded cell sizes, such that intercell movements are minimized. The assignment of parts to cells is then performed such that the number of exceptional parts is minimized. The solution of the algorithm starts from some initial conditions. A closed interval for the solution is then specified with a lower bound of the minimum inter-cell movements for the initial conditions and an upper bound on the inter-cell movements of the last cell. A combinatorial proof is provided to show that there exists at least one solution starting from the initial conditions.