A Hierarchical Hybrid Approach to Cell Loading, Manpower Allocation and Job Sequencing in Cellular Manufacturing

In this paper, a three-phase hierarchical methodology with two approaches is proposed to find the optimal manpower assignment and cell loads simultaneously and finally to sequence the jobs per cell such that specified performance measures are optimized. The first approach deals with the application of the linear programming optimization technique and the second one is based on the application of the evolutionary programming (EP). This paper only contains results for the first two phases. The methodology is illustrated with an example problem draw from a real manufacturing company and was expanded using generated random numbers for the operations times. The preliminary results obtained show that the selected alternative configurations, were enough to generate alternative operator levels and achieve the minimum operator and product assignment to cells with the optimal results. This research is still in progress in order to continue with the last phase of the study by using EP