An Efficient Algorithm to Allocate Parts to Cells Minimizing Total Tardiness and Idle Times

In the design of a cellular manufacturing system (CMS), one of the important problems is the cell formation in the form of machine grouping and parts family. This paper investigates an allocation of parts to common and specific cells; in such a way that each common cell is able to process all required parts. Further, this paper presents a mathematical programming model comprising such constraints as available time for common and special cells in each time horizon, and such variables as excess time required by each cell to process parts in each period. The objective of the model is to minimize the total tardiness in production of goods and sum of idle times of machines in each cell. To obtain good solutions, a simulated annealing (SA) method has been used. To verify the quality and efficiency of the SA algorithm, a number of test problems with different sizes are solved to show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Finally, results are compared with solutions obtained by Lingo 6 in terms of objective function values and computational time.