Development of a Web-Based Decision Support System for Cell Formation Problems Considering Alternative Process Routings and Machine Sequences

Chin-Chih Chang

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DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2010.32020                

Abstract

In this study, we use the respective advantages of the tabu search (TS) and the Web-based technologies to develop a Web-based decision support system (DSS) for cell formation (CF) problems considering alternative process routings and machine sequences simultaneously. With the assistance of our developed Web-based system, the CF practitioners in the production departments can interact with the systems without knowing the details of algorithms and can get the best machine cells and part families with minimize the total intercellular movement wherever and whenever they may need it. To further verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the system developed, an example taken from the literature is ado- pted for illustrational purpose. Moreover, a set of test problems with various sizes drawn from the literature is used to test the performance of the proposed system. Corresponding results are compared to several well-known algorithms previously published. The results indicate that the proposed system improves the best results found in the literature for 67% of the test problems. These show that the proposed system should thus be useful to both practitioners and researchers.

Keywords

Web-Based, Cell Formation, Tabu Search, Decision Support System, Alternative Process Routings

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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