A grouping genetic algorithm for the cell formation problem

Abstract

The cell formation problem (CFP) consists of constructing a set of machine cells and their corresponding product families with the objective of minimizing the inter-cell movement of the products while maximizing machine utilization. This paper presents a grouping genetic algorithm for the cell formation problem that uses grouping efficiency as a measure. We solve the CFP without predetermination of the number of cells. We also make some effort to improve the efficiency of our algorithm with respect to initialization of the population, keeping crossover operator from cloning . Computational results using the grouping efficacy measure
for a set of cell formation problems from the literature are presented. The algorithm developed performs well on all test problem, exceeding or matching the solution quality of the results presented in previous literature for most problems.