Virtual Manufacturing Cell Formation Problem (vmcfp) in a Distributed Layout

There are essentially two ways to implement a Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS): physical and logical. In the first case, the machines are laid out in the floor space in dedicated manufacturing cells to exploit flow shop efficiency in processing part families, whereas in the second case machines are dedicated to process part families in a process layout. Logical oriented CMS are known as Virtual Cellular Manufacturing Systems (VCMS). A VCMS presents a higher degree of flexibility, useful in a volatile environment where demand changes occur frequently. A novel approach to this problem is to consider that machines are spread in the shop floor in a distributed layout. In this work an algorithm is present that includes two stages: (i) the part family formation problem and (ii) the definition of the virtual cells configuration. The algorithm uses a metaheuristic to improve the exploration of the solution space.