A New Approach to Fuzzy Part-Family Formation in Cellular Manufacturing Systems

Group technology (GT) is one of the major issues in successful implementation of cellular manufacturing systems. The success of GT implementation depends only on an effective formation of part-families. The effective formation of part-families depends mainly on an effective formation of a similarity coefficient measure. Many similarity coefficients have been produced over the past three decades, but better similarity coefficient measures are required. The decision-making process in a manufacturing system often involves uncertainties and ambiguities. Under such circumstances, fuzzy methodologies have proved to be effective tools for taking fuzziness into consideration. In this paper, we use fuzzy cluster analysis to form part-families and assign parts to existing part-families. We have established a new approach to convert a fuzzy clustering matrix into a zero-one incidence matrix. We have also developed a new similarity coefficient measure and this coefficient measure is used to form a part-family. A mathemat-ical model that uses this similarity coefficient for solving optimally the part-family formation problems in cellular manufacturing is developed. Finally, it is compared with other models by giving an illustration with a numerical example.