Coordinating production planning in cellular manufacturing environment using Tabu search

In this paper, an integrated model for production planning in cellular manufacturing (CM) systems is proposed. The model considers general CM features such as quadratic terms for inter-cell material handling and decisions for manufacturing cell construction. In addition, the solution of the model will provide production planning decisions such as times to start part processing and levels of finished part inventory. The model is then transformed to equivalent simpler models and is solved by Tabu search based procedure. Results from testing numerical examples show encouraging behaviors of the developed model and algorithm. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.