International Journal of Computer Integrated

Manufacturing

ISSN: 0951-192X (Print) 1362-3052 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcim20

Multi-objective genetic algorithm for cell

formation problem considering cellular layout and
operations scheduling

Jamal Arkat , Mehdi Hosseinabadi Farahani & Fardin Ahmadizar

To cite this article: Jamal Arkat , Mehdi Hosseinabadi Farahani & Fardin Ahmadizar (2012) Multi-
objective genetic algorithm for cell formation problem considering cellular layout and operations
scheduling, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 25:7, 625-635, DOI:
10.1080/0951192X.2012.665182

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0951192X.2012.665182

Published online: 01 Mar 2012.

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 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
Vol. 25, No. 7, July 2012, 625635

Multi-objective genetic algorithm for cell formation problem considering cellular layout and
operations scheduling
Jamal Arkat*, Mehdi Hosseinabadi Farahani and Fardin Ahmadizar
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj 416, Iran
(Received 11 January 2011; nal version received 30 December 2011)
Downloaded by [Huazhong University of Science & Technology ] at 07:35 03 October 2017

Integrated design of cellular manufacturing (CM) systems consist of three major decisions: cell formation (CF),
cellular layout (CL) and planning issues such as cellular scheduling (CS). This article presents a mathematical model
to concurrently identify the formation of cells, cellular layout and the operations sequence with the objective of
minimising total transportation cost of parts as well as minimising makespan. A multi-objective genetic algorithm
(MOGA) is then developed to solve the problem. The proposed MOGA exploits a novel evolutionary process which
enables it to eciently nd Pareto optimal solutions. Computational results show the advantages of the proposed
integrated approach and the superiority of the proposed MOGA over some well-known multi-objective evolutionary
algorithms.
Keywords: cell formation; cellular layout; operations scheduling; multi-objective genetic algorithm

1. Introduction operations sequencing, machines capabilities, alterna-

Cellular manufacturing (CM) as an application of
group technology involves grouping of machines into
cells in which similar parts or products are manufac-
tured or assembled (Wemmerlov and Hyer 1986). CM
has been found benecial to some companies on
account of reduction in transportation time of parts,
set-up times, inventory level, cycle time and improve-
ment in human relations and operator expertise
(Gunasekaran et al. 1994). Designing a CM system
involves three major aspects: cell formation (CF),
cellular layout (CL) and cellular scheduling (CS) (Wu
et al. 2007b). The purpose of CF is to determine
machine cells and part families. The most common
objectives considered in the CF problem are minimis-
ing the number of or the total cost of intercellular
movement of parts. CL deals with specifying the layout
of cells in the shop oor and the layout of machines
within each cell. CS includes scheduling of part
families and individual parts within each cell.
The CF problem as the most important issue in the
CM system design has received most attention from
researchers. Based on the type of input data, the
approaches used for dealing with the CF problem can
be classied into two main groups. While the methods
in the rst category use machine-part incidence matrix
as the only input data, the second category includes
methods that use other manufacturing data such as
production volumes, processing and setup times,
tive process routings, reliability of machines and so on.
In order to solve the CF problem, many exact and
heuristic solution procedures have been developed (Wu
et al. 2009).
CL design consists of two stages: (i) allocation of
the machine cells to areas within the shop oor (inter-
cell layout) and (ii) layout of the machines within each
cell (intra-cell layout). The formation of cells obtained
from solving the CF problem has signicant eects on
the CL; and on the other hand, the inter-cell and intra-
cell layout are not independent and aect each other
(Hassan 1995). Most research devoted to the CL
design disregard these eects and assume the forma-
tion of cells as a prior and solve the inter-cell and intra-
cell layout problems independently. Chandrasekharan
and Rajagopalan (1993) have proposed a multidimen-
sional scaling algorithm for designing inter-cell layout
by considering predetermined CF. Computerised
LAyout Solutions using Simulated annealing (CLASS)
is a simulated annealing based method presented by
Jajodia et al. (1992) which determines the inter-cell and
intra-cell layout simultaneously. Sarker and Yu (1994)
have developed a two phase procedure to determine an
optimal linear layout of cells and nd bottle-neck
machines for duplication. Akturk (1996) has proposed
an approach to solve the CF and intra-cell layout
problem simultaneously. Salum (2000) has proposed a
two phase procedure for the cellular manufacturing

*Corresponding author. Email: j.arkat@uok.ac.ir

ISSN 0951-192X print/ISSN 1362-3052 online

2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0951192X.2012.665182
http://www.tandfonline.com
 626 J. Arkat et al.
layout problem through simulation. Urban et al.
(2000) have presented a model to solve the machine
layout problem and the product assignment problem
simultaneously. Chiang and Lee (2004) have proposed
a genetic algorithm hybridised with a dynamic pro-
gramming algorithm to solve the joint problem of CF
and inter-CL considering linear layout for machines
inside cells. Mahdavi et al. (2008) have proposed a
ow-matrix based heuristic to solve the CF problem
and to determine the arrangement of machines in each
cell. Chan et al. (2008) have presented a two phase
approach to tackle the CF and CL problems sequen-
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tially where linear congurations are considered for
both intra-cell and inter-cell layouts. Wu et al. (2007a)
have developed a genetic algorithm to solve the CF
problem and cellular layout simultaneously.
Although the CS decision is one of the most
important issues in the practical situations, it has not
been widely addressed, compared to CF and CL topics
(Tavakkoli-Moghaddam et al. 2010). Sridhar and
Rajendran (1993) have proposed a hybrid simulated
annealing algorithm to solve the scheduling problem in
the CM systems. Considering the formation of cells as
a prior, the algorithm tries to obtain an operations
sequence minimising the total ow time in a ow line
cell. Reddy and Narendran (2003) have proposed a
number of heuristics to schedule jobs within a part
family by identifying subfamilies. The objective is to
improve the utilisation of machines within a cell and to
reduce the tardiness and the number of tardy jobs.
SolimanpurVratShankar (SVS) algorithm is a two
stage heuristic algorithm proposed by Solimanpur
et al. (2004) to minimise the makespan in a CM
system. The intracellular scheduling and the intercel-
lular scheduling as the two stages of the algorithm
determine the sequence of operations and the sequence
of cells, respectively. Franca et al. (2005) have used
evolutionary algorithms to solve the problem of
scheduling part families and jobs inside each part
family in a ow shop manufacturing cell by consider-
ing sequence dependent family setups times. The
proposed model is to minimise the makespan of the
jobs in each part family. Mak et al. (2007) have
proposed a mathematical model and an ant colony
optimisation approach for solving CF and CS pro-
blems in a virtual CM system. Hendizadeh et al. (2008)
have proposed tabu search based metaheuristics for
scheduling a ow-line manufacturing cell in order to
minimise the makespan. Lin et al. (2009) have
investigated the eectiveness of using non-permutation
schedules in ow-line manufacturing cells by propos-
ing and evaluating three types of metaheuristics,
namely simulated annealing, genetic algorithm and
tabu search. Solimanpur and Elmi (2011) have
investigated the group scheduling problem in ow
shop cells with limited buers between successive
machines. They have proposed a mathematical model
with the objective of minimising makespan and two
tabu search algorithms to solve the problem.
It is evident that the three mentioned decisions in
designing a CM system (i.e. CF, CL and CS) have
signicant eects on each other. The importance of
considering the interactions among these subproblems of
CM system design has been emphasised by Arvindh and
Irani (1994) and Hassan (1995). Considering the inter-
actions among CF, CL and CS decisions in the CM
system design will improve the eectiveness and pro-
ductivity of the system. The only mathematical model
that integrates CF, CL and CS in the CM system design
has been proposed by Wu et al. (2007b). The diculty
inherent in their research is that the proposed model and
solution algorithm does not handle the inter-cell layout
in a correct manner, i.e. cells may overlap each other.
However, in a cellular layout design, except in virtual
CM systems, disjoint cells are needed to be determined in
the shop oor. We discuss this issue in the next section
and provide a mathematical framework for forming
rectangular non-overlapping cells in CM system.
In this article, a mathematical model is presented to
provide a well-dened formulation of the integrated
CM design. Three major stages of designing a CM
system (i.e. CF, CL and CS) are considered with the
objective of minimising total transportation cost of
parts and minimising makespan. A multi-objective
genetic algorithm (MOGA) is then developed to solve
the problem. The characteristic features of the pro-
posed MOGA include its evolutionary process over
generations with a new mechanism for calculating
tness value of individuals and procedure of decoding
a chromosome to a solution. Applying the proposed
approach to the integrated design of CM system
demonstrates its superiority over three well-known
multi-objective evolutionary approaches.
The remainder of this article is organised as
follows: mathematical model is presented in section
2. In section 3, details of the proposed algorithm are
explained. Section 4 shows the computational results
and the conclusion follows in section 5.
2. Mathematical model
The model presented in this article is an extension of
the model proposed by Arkat et al. (2011). The aim of
this model is to determine concurrently the formation
of cells, the layout of machines inside cells, the layout
of cells in the shop oor and the scheduling of
operations in a way that total transportation cost of
parts and makespan are minimised. Minimising total
transportation cost is the most common objective in
the layout problems and minimising makespan yields
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
to a good utilisation of machines a very important
issue in designing CM systems. Total transportation
cost is dened as the sum of intracellular and
intercellular transportation costs. As emphasised by
Logendran (1991), the sequence of operations should
be taken into consideration in evaluating the trans-
portation cost of parts in a correct manner.
It is obvious that in an accurate cellular layout,
cells should not be overlapped. This is the case that has
not been respected in the model proposed by Wu et al.
(2007b), where machines located in each position can
be assigned to any of the cells without any restriction.
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The model presented in the current article prevents
cells from being overlapped by imposing some restric-
tions on assigning machines to cells. When two
machines are allocated to a cell, any other machine
which is located between these two machines should
also be assigned to the same cell. When we say that a
machine is located between two other machines, we
mean that the horizontal and vertical coordinates of its
centre are between the corresponding coordinates of
the centres of those two machines. Figure 1 shows an
example of three machines. It can be seen that
x1  x2  x3 and y1  y2  y3 where xi and yi are
horizontal and vertical coordinates of the centre of
machine i, respectively. When machines 1 and 3 are
allocated to a cell, a restriction is needed to impose that
machine 2 is also assigned to the same cell. This
restriction is essential to form rectangular non-over-
lapping cells (Arkat et al. 2011).
The intra-cellular layout in the CM system should
follow one of the common congurations for the
manufacturing systems such as single row (ow line),
multi rows (job shop) or loop layout (Hassan 1995). In
the proposed model, the job shop conguration is
considered for the intra-cellular layout. It is assumed
that cells are rectangles and there is no clearance
between machines. Furthermore, machines are con-
sidered as squares of equal area and hence, they are
Figure 1. Illustrative example for forming non-overlapping
cells.
627
supposed to have a unit dimension. It has been
examined for many layout problems that the proposed
considerations provide suitable approximation to the
real-world situations where machines are not exact
squares or rectangles (Heragu 1997).
The following notations and denitions are con-
sidered in the mathematical model:
i: index for machines i 1; . . . ; m
j: index for parts j 1; . . . ; n
k: index for cells k 1; . . . ; C
o: index for operations o 1; . . . ; Nj
m: number of machines
n: number of parts
C: number of cells to be formed
R: maximum number of machines allowed in each cell
H: horizontal dimension of the oor plan
V: vertical dimension of the oor plan
Nj: number of operations of part j
TAj: intracellular transfer unit time for part j
TEj: intercellular transfer unit time for part j
CAj: intracellular transfer unit cost for part j
CEj: intercellular transfer unit cost for part j
tjo: processing time of operation o of part j
gjo: completion time of operation o of part j
g(j): completion time of part j
g: makespan or maximum completion time
xi: horizontal distance between centre of machine i
and vertical reference line
yi: vertical distance between centre of machine i and
horizontal reference line
Cj(oo0 ): intracellular or intercellular transportation cost
for part j between operations o and o0
Tj(oo0 ): intracellular or intercellular transportation time
for part j between operations o and o0
Si: set of operations to be performed on machine i
Ujoi: 1, if operation o of part j is processed on machine
i and 0 otherwise
wjo0 o0 : 1, if operation o of part j precedes operation o0 of
part j0 and 0 otherwise
zik: 1, if machine i is assigned to cell k and 0 otherwise
piuv: 1, if xi  xv  xu or xu  xv  xi and 0 otherwise
qiuv: 1, if yi  yv  yu or yu  yv  yi and 0 otherwise
M: an appropriate large number
The proposed model is presented as follows:
n N
X X j 1
min Cjo;o1 1
j1 o1
min g 2
X
C
zik 1; 8i 3
k1
 628 J. Arkat et al.

X
m
Equation (2) minimises the makespan. Equation (3)
zik  R; 8k 4 guarantees that each machine is assigned to only one
i1
cell. Equation (4) prevents from assigning more than R
X
m machines to each cell. Equation (5) imposes that at
zik  1; 8k 5 least one machine is assigned to each cell. Equation (6)
i1 is to prevent machines from overlapping each other.
Constraints (7) through (11) prevent cells from being
jxi  xu j jyi  yu j  1; 1i<um 6 overlapped and force cells to be rectangular. Equation
(12) calculates intercellular and intracellular transpor-
xv  xi xu  xv < Mpiuv ; 8i; u; v 7 tation cost for part j between operations o and o0 .
Constraints (13) and (14) force machines to be located
 xv  xi xu  xv  M1  piuv ; 8i; u; v 8 within the boundaries of the oor plan. Equation (15)
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calculates intercellular and intracellular transportation

yv  yi yu  yv < Mqiuv ; 8i; u; v
 yv  yi yu  yv  M1  qiuv ; 8i; u; v
zik zuk piuv qiuv  3  zvk ; 8i; u; v
Cjoo0 Ujoi Ujo0 u zik zuk jxi  xu j jyi  yu jCAj
Ujoi Ujo0 u zik 1  zuk jxi  xu j jyi  yu jCEj
1  o o0  1  N j  1
xi  H; 8i
yi  V; 8i
Tjoo0 Ujoi Ujo0 u zik zuk jxi  xu j jyi  yu jTAj
Ujoi Ujo0 u zik 1  zuk jxi  xu j jyi  yu jTEj ;
1  o o0  1  N j  1
gjo0  gjo  tjo0 Tjoo0 ; 8j; 1  o o0  1  Nj  1
 
gj0 o0  gjo M 1  wjoj0 o0  tjo ; o; o0  2 Si
gjo  gj0 o0 Mwjoj0 o0  tj0 o0 ; o; o0  2 Si
9 time for part j between operations o and o0 . Equation
(16) imposes that each part is processed on machines
10 according to the dened precedence of operations in its
process routing. Constraints (17) and (18) impose that
11 at most one part is being processed by each machine at
a time. Constraint (19) ensures that completion time of
operation o of part j is greater than or equal to its
processing time and constraint (20) calculates the
12 completion time of part j. Equation (21) ensures that
the makespan is at least the completion time of each
part. Equations (22) and (23) specify that the decision
13 variables are binary and integer variables.
Note that when the horizontal coordinate of the
14 centre of machine v is between the horizontal
coordinates of the centres of machines i and u (i.e.
xi  xv  xu or xu  xv  xi ) constraints (7) and (8)
impose that piuv is equal to 1. Similarly, according to
15 Equations (9) and (10), when the vertical coordinate of
the centre of machine v is between the vertical co-
ordinates of the centres of machines i and u (i.e.
yi  yv  yu or yu  yv  yi ) qiuv is equal to 1. Now,
16 with respect to Equation (11), if piuv 1, qiuv 1, and
machines i and u are assigned to cell k, then machine v
should also be located in cell k. Hence, machines are
17 located in distinct rectangular areas which form non-
overlapping cells.
18

gjo  tjo ; 8o; j 19 3. Multi-objective genetic algorithm

gj  gjo ; 8o; j
g  gj ; 8j
zik ; piuv ; qiuv ; Ujoi ; wjoj0 o0 0 or 1; 8i; u; v; j; k; o; o0
xi ; yi integer; i 1; hellip; ; m
Equations (1) and (2) give the objectives. Equation
(1) minimises the total transportation cost of parts and
The proposed MOGA starts with a randomly gener-
20 ated population and evolves through generations. The
tness function is calculated initially based on the
21 rst objective function until no further improvement
is occurred. The best solution found is added to the
tentative set of Pareto optimal solutions, and its second
22 objective value is used for calculating tness function
in the next generations. For convenience, at this time,
we say that another era begins. At the beginning of
23 each era, a prespecied percent of population is
replaced by randomly generated solutions to increase
diversity of the population. The tness function in each
era is calculated based on the rst objective function
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
and the second objective value of the best solution
found in the previous era. In other words, during an
era, the evolutionary process tries to minimise the rst
objective function while the second objective value of
each individual is restricted by an upper limit. This
upper limit is the second objective value of the best
solution found in the previous era and is updated at the
beginning of each era. This restriction is implemented
by imposing penalty to individuals opposing the
restriction. The algorithm terminates when no solution
is found in which the second objective value is better
than the second objective value of the best solution
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found in the previous era. However, the algorithm is
somewhat time consuming, but in practical situations,
it is reasonable to spend a slightly large amount of time
to nd good solutions for the problem. The overall
structure of the algorithm is described below:
Notation
f0 x: the tness value of the best individual in the
current era.
g02 x: the second objective value related to the best
individual in the current era.
g002 x: the second objective value related to the best
individual in the previous era.
M: an appropriate large number.
Algorithm
Step 0 generate an initial population. Set g002 x M.
Step 1 for each individual calculate the values of the
objective functions g1 x and g2 x.
Step 2 calculate tness function fx for each indi-
vidual as follows (hmax is the maximum amount of
h(x) in the current population):
fx hmax  hx 24
 The sequence which is represented by the second
g1 x if g2 x < g00 2 x
hx 25
g1 x M if g2 x  g00 2 x
update f0 x and g02 x.
Step 3 apply crossover operator to the selected pairs
from the population.
Step 4 apply mutation operator to each ospring
with a specied mutation rate.
Figure 2. Representation.
629
Step 5 apply selection operator to determine
individuals who carried over to the next generation.
Step 6 if hmin > M (hmin is the minimum amount of
h(x) in the current population) go to Step 8, else If
f0 x has not changed in Nnot_improve (a prespecied
number of) previous generations go to Step 7, else go
to Step 1.
Step 7 set g002 x g02 x, add the best individual of
the current population to the set of Pareto optimal
solutions, replace a prespecied percent of the
population (Preplace) with randomly generated solu-
tions and go to Step 1.
Step 8 the nal solution is selected from the nal set
of Pareto optimal solutions by the decision maker.
3.1. Representation
First stage of the GA implementation is to transform a
typical solution to the format of a chromosome string.
In the proposed algorithm, each chromosome consists
of two sections; the rst section is assigned to the
machines and the second section stands for parts. The
length of rst section is equal to 3m (m is the number of
machines) in which the rst m genes represent the
horizontal distance between the centres of machines and
the vertical reference line, the second m genes depict the
vertical distance between the centres of machines and the
horizontal reference line and the third m genes stand for
the allocation of machines to cells. The second section of
each chromosome has a length of n (n is the number of
parts) in which genes represent the scheduling sequence
for parts. For example, consider a problem with four
machines, six parts and two cells. Figure 2 presents an
instance chromosome for this problem. This chromo-
some indicates the horizontal and vertical coordinates of
machines, machines allocation and parts sequence. For
example machine 1, belongs to cell 1 and its centre is
at (1,1).
section of the chromosome should be decoded in order
to obtain a feasible schedule. The operations of each
job can be directly put in the schedule according to the
order of jobs in the chromosome. This simple
procedure will result in a semi-active schedule. How-
ever, the set of semi-active schedules is very large and
has poor quality in terms of makespan (Pinedo 2008).
 630
The eciency of the algorithm will be improved by
using a decoding operator which can reduce the search
area but does not exclude the optimal solution. The set
of active schedules is much smaller than the set of semi-
active schedules and also includes the optimal solution.
In an active schedule, it is not possible to start a job
any earlier without delaying another job (Pinedo
2008). The decoding operator used in the proposed
algorithm is based on Gier and Thompsons (G&T)
algorithm which can decode a permutation of jobs into
an active schedule (Gier and Thompson 1960). The
modied G&T algorithm is described below.
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Notation:
oij: operation of part j that needs to be processed on
machine i.
S: partial schedule that contains scheduled operations.
O: set of schedulable operations.
pij: processing time of operation oij.
tij: transfer time of part j between operation oij and its
immediate predecessor.
dii: distance between machine i and machine i0 .
sij: earliest time at which operation oij can be started.
fij: earliest time at which operation oij can be nished.
ri: earliest time at which machine i is ready for
processing in partial schedule S.
TAj: intracellular transfer unit time for part j.
TEj: intercellular transfer unit time for part j.
Decoding algorithm:
Set S F and O to contain rst operations of all jobs.
If oij has no predecessor set tij 0.
Else
If oij and its immediate predecessor oij are processed in
same cell, set tij dii0 6 TAj
Else set tij dii 6 TEj
Repeat  
For each oij 2 O calculate sij max fi0 j tij ; ri and
fij sij pij where fi0 j is the completion time of the
immediate predecessor of operation oij.
Determine fi min oij2O fij for each
 machine.
Identify the operation set Y oij sij < fi ; oij 2 O .
Choose oij from the set Y which its corresponding job
is prior to other jobs in the permutation.
Add oij to S and assign sij as its starting time.
Delete oij from O and add its immediate successor
to O.
Until O is empty.
3.2. Initialisation
Initialisation is a process in which an initial population
with a desired population size is generated. In the
J. Arkat et al.
proposed algorithm, individuals are generated ran-
domly in a manner that each generated chromosome is
feasible. A chromosome is feasible if no two machines
neither two cells overlap and its second section is
encoded by a permutation of all parts. A repair
strategy is utilised to transform an infeasible chromo-
some to a feasible one. When two machines overlap,
one of them is selected randomly and assigned
randomly to an area in the shop oor that is not
occupied by any other machine. In order to form
rectangular non-overlapping cells, the following algo-
rithm is used:
Notation:
xi: horizontal distance between centre of machine i
and vertical reference line.
yi: vertical distance between centre of machine i and
horizontal reference line.
For any couple of machines i , u assigned to same cell k
If there exists machine v such that (xi  xv  xu or
xu  xv  xi ) and (yi  yv  yu or yu  yv  yi ) then
assign machine v to cell k.
End
3.3. Reproduction
The selection procedure is based on the roulette
wheel approach which is a tness proportional
selection and ensures that tter individuals have
a higher chance of being selected. An elitist strategy
is also incorporated in which the best chromosome
in the population is carried over to the next
generation.
3.4. Crossover
Crossover operator is applied on two randomly
selected chromosomes as parents and combines their
information to generate two ospring. The proposed
algorithm utilises the one-point crossover and the
partially mapped crossover (PMX). At rst, a cross-
 point is randomly selected over the length of the
chromosome; if the point is in the machine section,
then the one-point crossover is executed, otherwise
PMX is applied for the part section. Figure 3 shows an
example of crossover in a problem with four machines,
two parts and two cells in which the cross-point has
been selected in the part section.
3.5. Mutation
Mutation operator produces slight changes to alter
genetic composition of a chromosome. In this article,
three dierent mutations are dened to ensure that
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
Figure 3. Example of crossover.
the population has the chance to obtain new
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characteristics.
(i) Select a machine randomly and change its
position randomly to an area in the oor
plan.
(ii) Select two machines randomly from dierent
cells and exchange their cells.
(iii) Exchange the sequence order of two ran-
domly selected parts.
4. Computational results
The proposed algorithm has been coded in C# and run
on a 2.00 GHz PC with 2.00 GB of RAM. Some
parameters need to be set while running the algorithm
including population size, crossover rate, mutation
rate, number of non-improving generations after which
a new era begins (Nnot_improve), and percent of popula-
tion which is replaced by random generated solutions
at the beginning of each era (Preplace). In order to set
theses parameters, the algorithm has been run on some
randomly generated problems with dierent sizes and
the following results have been achieved. The popula-
tion size has been set to 200; the crossover and
mutation rates have been set to 0.9 and 0.2, respec-
tively, Nnot_improve 10 and Preplace 0.4.
The computational experiments are carried out in
two main parts. The rst part is to investigate the
interactions among three major decisions in CM
system design by comparing integrated and non-
integrated approaches. In the second part, the perfor-
mance of the proposed MOGA is evaluated and
compared with some other well-known multi-objective
evolutionary approaches.
4.1. Integrated vs. non-integrated approaches
In this experiment, the interactions among CF, CL and
CS are evaluated by using two approaches, integrated
vs. non-integrated. The non-integrated approach con-
sists of two steps. In the rst step, CF and CL
problems are solved without considering CS decision
with the objective of minimising total transportation
631
cost of parts. Then, the optimal schedule is obtained
for the resulted conguration. In the integrated
approach, the proposed mathematical model is used
to solve CF, CL and CS problems concurrently with
the objective of minimising total transportation cost of
parts as well as minimising makespan. In order to nd
Pareto optimal solutions in this approach, e-constraint
method (Haimes et al. 1971) has been used. In the
e-constraint method, the multi-objective optimisation
problem is reformulated by keeping one of the
objectives while the rest of the objectives are restricted
within user specied values. The proposed mixed
integer nonlinear model has been linearised and the
resulted mixed integer linear model has been solved by
a branch and bound (B&B) method using LINGO 8.0
software.
A random generation procedure has been used to
produce numerical examples. The parameters need to
be generated are process routing for each part and
processing time for each operation. Number of
machines in each part process routing is considered
to be an integer number randomly selected between 2
and [m/2] 1. Machines are selected randomly for
each process routing and arranged in a random
manner. The processing times of operations are
random integer numbers between 2 and 30.
Two small-sized problems have been generated
using the abovementioned procedure. The rst small-
sized example consists of four parts to be processed on
four machines. Machines should be assigned to two
cells and maximum number of machines allowed in
each cell is two. The data related to this example are
shown in Figure 4 in which rows and columns of
matrices are considered as machines and parts,
respectively. Process routings of parts are shown in
Figure 4(a) and processing times of operations are
depicted in Figure 4(b).
In the non-integrated approach, the optimal total
transportation cost of parts is 230 and the optimal
makespan for the resulted conguration is 145. The
problem has also been solved using the proposed
integrated approach. Two Pareto optimal solutions are
obtained for this problem by the e-constraint method.
The details of the obtained objective values are shown
 632 J. Arkat et al.

in Table 1. In order to solve the problem by the
proposed MOGA, the algorithm runs 10 times for the
problem. The average number of Pareto optimal
solutions obtained in each run and the average CPU
time are shown in Table 1. As expected, the MOGA
nds Pareto optimal solutions of the problem within a
small amount of time.
As can be seen in Table 1, the non-integrated
approach yields to just one of the Pareto optimal
solutions obtained by the integrated approach. Provid-
ing dierent Pareto optimal solutions gives the
decision maker an opportunity to choose the satisfac-
Downloaded by [Huazhong University of Science & Technology ] at 07:35 03 October 2017
measures: total transportation cost of parts and
makespan. For example, choosing solution 2 instead
of solution 1, yields to an improvement of 15 units in
terms of makespan while increasing total transporta-
tion cost of parts by 90 units.
The advantages of the proposed integrated ap-
proach are better shown in the second small-sized
problem in which ve parts are to be processed on four
machines. The data related to this example are shown
in Figure 5. Table 2 shows the Pareto optimal solutions
obtained by the e-constraint method and the proposed
MOGA for this problem. Obviously, the non-inte-

tory solution based on his preferences over two grated approach yields to solution 1 in which total

Figure 4. Data related to the rst small-sized example: (a) process routings of parts and (b) processing time of operations.

Table 1. Results for the rst small-sized example.

e-constraint method MOGA

Pareto optimal Total transportation Average no. of Pareto Average
solutions Makespan cost optimal solutions time (s)
Solution 1 145 230 2 0.54
Solution 2 130 320

Figure 5. Data related to the second small-sized example: (a) process routings of parts and (b) processing time of operations.

Table 2. Results for the second small-sized example.

e-constraint method MOGA

Pareto optimal Total transportation Average no. of Pareto Average
solutions Makespan cost optimal solutions time (s)
Solution 1 112 615 3 0.78
Solution 2 99 645
Solution 3 89 700
 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 633

transportation cost of parts is optimal. However, the
decision maker may not be satised with the resulted
makespan. In the proposed integrated approach, two
other Pareto optimal solutions are also suggested to
the decision maker. The decision maker can now
choose to reduce the makespan to a satisfactory level
by paying additional cost.
4.2. Performance of the proposed MOGA
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed
MOGA on large-sized problems, 10 other examples
Downloaded by [Huazhong University of Science & Technology ] at 07:35 03 October 2017
calculated using the following equation (Altiparmak
et al. 2006):
Pi  fX 2 Pi 9Y 2 P : Y  Xg
RPi 26
Pi
where Pi is the set of Pareto optimal solutions obtained
from one run of approach i; P is the union S of the sets
of Pareto optimal solutions (i.e. P 3i1 Pi ) and
Y  X means that the solution X is dominated by the
solution Y. In fact, the average ratio of Pareto optimal
solutions shows the quality of the solutions obtained

have been generated based on the random generation by each approach.

procedure described in section 4.1. The proposed
algorithm is compared with three dierent approaches:
GA_A1 proposed by Murata et al. (1996), GA_A2
proposed by Zhou and Gen (1999) and NSGA-II
proposed by Deb et al. (2002). GA_A1 and GA_A2
use weight-sum technique and they dier from each
other only according to determining weights. In
GA_A1, the individuals are selected based on a
weighted sum of objective functions with variable
weights, but in GA_A2 weights are determined based
on the ideal point generated in each evolutionary
process. NSGA-II is an elitist multi-objective evolu-
tionary algorithm using a fast non-dominated sorting
method. Multiple runs on some randomly generated
problems with dierent sizes have been initially
conducted to set the parameters of NSGA-II. Dierent
values for the parameters have been considered and the
following values have been superior: population size
300, crossover probability 0.9 and mutation probabil-
ity 0.1.
Two performance measures obtained over 10 runs
of each algorithm are used to compare the proposed
MOGA with three other approaches. The perfor-
mance measures are average number of Pareto
optimal solutions and average ratio of Pareto optimal
solutions. The second performance measure is
Data related to the large sized examples and
experimental results are summarised in Table 3.
Although the average number of Pareto optimal
solutions obtained by GA_A1, GA_A2, and NSGA-
II are slightly greater than that of the proposed
MOGA, MOGA outperforms other approaches in
terms of the average ratio of Pareto optimal solutions.
In fact, the quality of the solutions generated by
MOGA is higher than that of three other approaches
which means that many solutions obtained by GA_A1,
GA_A2, and NSGA-II are dominated by the solutions
found by MOGA.
5. Conclusion
In this article, a mathematical model has been
presented considering the exact information about
the layout of machines and the scheduling of opera-
tions in the cellular manufacturing systems. The
purpose of the model is to nd the formation of cells,
the intercellular and intracellular layout, and the
operation scheduling with the objective of minimising
total transportation cost of parts as well as minimising
makespan. A MOGA with a novel mechanism for
calculating the tness function over generations has
been developed. The advantages of the proposed

Table 3. Comparison of MOGA and other approaches.

Average number of Pareto optimal solutions Average ratio of Pareto optimal solutions
No. m n C GA_A1 GA_A2 NSGA-II MOGA GA_A1 GA_A2 NSGA-II MOGA
1 10 10 3 3.3 2.9 2.7 2.8 0.68 0.70 0.72 0.76
2 10 15 3 3.8 4.2 3.8 3.7 0.75 0.72 0.71 0.79
3 10 20 3 4.1 4.7 4.0 3.9 0.71 0.67 0.69 0.72
4 15 15 4 7.5 9.1 7.4 7.1 0.57 0.58 0.58 0.61
5 15 20 4 6.8 9.3 9.2 8.1 0.72 0.60 0.61 0.74
6 15 25 4 10.2 11.1 10.1 9.5 0.70 0.65 0.71 0.74
7 20 20 5 22.4 26.1 20.1 20.2 0.64 0.57 0.63 0.67
8 20 25 5 21.7 25.4 26.3 22.2 0.57 0.53 0.59 0.62
9 20 30 5 28.1 32.4 30.6 25.6 0.51 0.49 0.50 0.58
10 20 40 5 37.3 41.2 38.9 32.1 0.42 0.45 0.47 0.53
 634 J. Arkat et al.
integrated approach have been shown by solving two
small-sized examples. Additionally, applying the pro-
posed MOGA on some randomly generated numerical
examples demonstrate the superiority of the algorithm
over some traditional multi-objective evolutionary
algorithms.
We believe that taking into account other
objective functions for the operations scheduling in
the problem in hand is attractive for the further
research. In addition, using other production data such
as production volumes, setup times, alternative process
routings and so on makes the model become more
Downloaded by [Huazhong University of Science & Technology ] at 07:35 03 October 2017
practical.
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