An Evolutionary Computation Approach to a Numerical Cell Formation Problem

This paper examines a cellular manufacturing optimisation problem in a new facility of a pharmaceutical company. The new facility, together with the old one, should be adequate to handle current and future production requirements. The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential use of evolutionary computation in order to find the optimum configuration of the cells in the facility. The objective is to maximise the total number of batches processed per year in the facility. In addition, a two-objective optimisation search was implemented, using several evolutionary computation methods. The additional objective is to minimise the overall cost. The cost is proportional to the number if cells in the facility. The multi-objective optimisation programs were based on three approaches; The weighted-sum approach, the Pareto-optimality approach and the Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) approach. Finally, a local search program was implemented, based on the MOGA approach.