An Efficient Genetic Algorithm to Solve the Manufacturing Cell Formation Problem

摘要

A fundamental stage in the design of manufacturing systems is the simultaneous formation of machine cells and families of parts. This problem has been addressed using a number of approaches, but genetic algorithms have had the most success. This paper presents an innovative integer genetic algorithm based on a partial definition of solutions together with a recursive fitness function based on Baldwin effect. The proposed algorithm was tested on a number of problems taken from the literature, and the comparative results are presented.