Cell Formation with Alternative Routings and Capacity Considerations: A Hybrid Tabu Search Approach

Cell formation considering the availability of alternative routings and the processing capacity of available machines is a challenging optimization problem, since it imposes the solution of a two step problem: i) assign machines to cells; and ii) assign manufacturing parts (routings) to cells. The objective is to minimize extra-cellular processing of tasks when routings of parts are selected. A hybrid tabu search approach is proposed to solve this cell formation problem. The proposed approach applies tabu search to assign machines to cells and branch-and-bound to select routings. In order to reduce the search space, a set of feasibility and pruning tests are proposed. A problem proposed and used at previous papers is used to compare the results of the proposed approach and the results presented by previous papers.