A fuzzy analysis approach for part-machine grouping

in cellular manufacturing systems

A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
Industrial Engineering Program, College of Engineering, King Saud University,
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Introduction
Nowadays, manufacturing systems have
gone though major changes due to the
advances in technologies and strategies.
Cellular manufacturing has been recognized
as the key to improve productivity,
flexibility, production management, quality
and material flow. Cellular manufacturing
systems (CMS) are the manufacturing
systems which are based on group
technology (GT) concept. This basic concept
of CMS is the decomposition of the
manufacturing system into subsystems
(manufacturing cells), by grouping parts into
families and machines into machine cells,
based upon the simplifies between system
objects (parts and/or machines). CMS have
been implemented in many industries and
their benefits are well realized (Shanker and
Vart, 1999; Wemmerlov and Johnson, 1997).
Formation of cellular manufacturing
systems (CMS) is a complex problem with
broad implications an organization, due to
different issues related to both system
structure and system operations. The
problem of CMS has been considered as a
multi-objective problem in the literature. It
includes selections of parts, machine cells,
tools, fixtures, material handling systems,
and equipment layout in addition to
operational problems such as process plan,
scheduling, etc. These problems have been
widely considered in the literature. There is
no unique solution to these problems due to
the differences among design and operational
requirements and constraints from one
application to another. Therefore, the CMS
should be configured and designed based
upon requirements and constraints of the
system being considered. Consequently,
trading off the objectives related to cell
design variables would be necessary. In
addition, proposing, evaluating and
comparing CMS design methods and
techniques are required to provide an
effective solution to a CMS problem.
A number of CMS design approaches have
been developed. Comprehensive reviews of
cell design approaches are presented by
several researchers (Chu, 1989; Singh, 1993;
Shafer, 1998; Suresh and Kay, 1998; Shanker
and Vart, 1999; Mansouri et al., 2000). These
approaches can be classified into several
categories as follows:
.
mathematical programming approaches;
.
similarity coefficient methods;
.
fuzzy approaches;
.
neural networks methods;
.
artificial intelligence methods; and
.
heuristic approaches.
In selecting part families and machine cells
of CMS, there is uncertainty or vagueness in
system parameters. Most of the methods
proposed are metric: a convenient distance
measure being selected (Euclidean, diagonal,
etc.) in p-space, some concept of homogeneity
yields an objective function to be minimized
(Roubens, 1977). Therefore, there is a need to
use and develop practical approaches such as
fuzzy approaches which can deal with
uncertainty or vagueness in system
parameters.
The fuzzy clustering algorithms offer a
special advantage of a conventional
clustering and allow a description of some of
the uncertainties that often go with real data
and reveal the specific part family/machine
cell that a part/machine belongs to. In
addition, these algorithms provide the degree
of membership of a part/machine associated
with each part family/machine cell. This
would provide users with more flexibility in
designing part families and machine cells.
Few researchers have proposed fuzzy
approaches to CMS problems (Hu and Wang,
1989; Chu and Hayya, 1991; Maznata and
Settineri, 1997; Gindy and Ratchev, 1997;
Susanto et al., 1999), whereas fuzzy
approaches have the advantages of much
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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[ 489]
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
# MCB UP Limited
[ISSN 0957-6061]
[DOI 10.1108/09576060210442653]
Keywords
Cellular manufacturing, Design,
Cluster analysis, Fuzzy logics
AbstractAmong the many
accepted clustering techniques,
the fuzzy clustering approaches
have been developed over the last
decades. These approaches have
been applied to many areas in
manufacturing systems. In this
paper, a fuzzy clustering approach
is proposed for selecting machine
cells and part families in cellular
manufacturing systems. This fuzzy
approach offers a special
advantage over existing clustering
approaches as it presents the
degree of membership of the
machine or part associated with
each machine cell or part family
allowing users flexibility in
formulating machine cells and part
families. The proposed algorithm
is extended and validated using
numerical examples to
demonstrate its application in
cellular manufacturing.
Received May 2000
Revised February 2001
Accepted August 2001
The author gratefully
acknowledges the two
anonymous referees for their
valuable suggestions for
improving this paper. Thanks
are also due to Dr Naser Aziz
(King Saud University) for
his contributions throughout
the revision stage of this
research.
more detailed information on the structure of
the data. In fuzzy clustering, each object
(machine or part) is more or less ``spread out''
over the various clusters via membership
grades that range from zero to one
(Rousseeuw et al., 1989).
In this paper a fuzzy clustering approach is
proposed to select part families and machine
cells of CMS. This approach is tested and
evaluated using numerical examples from
the literature.
Fuzzy clustering approaches
The objective of cluster analysis is to group a
set of objects into a number of clusters.
Different clustering algorithms have been
used for this purpose. These algorithms can
be classified into three main categories:
1 heuristical;
2 hierarchical; and
3 partitional clustering methods (Zahid
et al., 1999).
Fuzzy clustering algorithms are partitioning
methods that can be used to assign objects of
the data set to their clusters. These
algorithms optimize a subjective function
that evaluates a given fuzzy assignment of
objects to clusters. Various fuzzy clustering
algorithms have been developed such as
fuzzy c-means (Bezdek, 1981), MND2
(Roubens, 1977), and a fuzzy clustering
algorithm (Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1990),
but the most widely used is the fuzzy c-means
algorithm.
Fuzzy c-mean algorithm is based on the
objective function:

k
(u
ki
)
m
d
2
(k. i). (1)
MND2 algorithm is based on the following
objective function:

ij
u
2
ik
u
2
jk
d(i. j). (2)
Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990) proposed the
following fuzzy objective function:

k
v=1

n
i.j=1
u
2
iv
u
2
jv
d(i. j)
2

n
j=1
u
2
jv
. (3)
where u
iv
represents the membership of
machine/part i in cluster v. The d(i,j) is the
given distance between machines/parts i
and j.
More details about fuzzy clustering
algorithms can be found in Roubens (1977;
1982), Bezdek (1974), Ruspini (1970), Dunn
(1974), Hathaway and Bezdek (1988), and
Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990).
It has been found that much of the previous
work in the application of fuzzy clustering in
CMS has been concentrated on the fuzzy
c-means algorithms. Hu and Wang (1989)
proposed a fuzzy approach to define the
relationships between part-type and
part-type cluster and machine-type and
machine-type cluster in designing part
families and machine cells. They used the
fuzzy-c-means algorithm given by Bezdek
(1981). This approach has been simplified
by Chu and Hayya (1991) by using
machine/part incidence matrices as input
for configuration of part and machines
clusters. These approaches have also been
adopted by Maznata and Settineri (1997),
Gindy and Ratchev (1997) and Susanto et al.
(1999).
In general, most of the existing fuzzy
approaches which have been used in CMS are
based on Chu and Hayya's method and its
subsequent modifications by other
researches. However, Chu and Hayya's (1991)
method can result in a solution with empty
part-type cluster(s) and/or empty
machine-type cluster(s). Recently, Susanto
et al. (1999) modified Chu and Hayya's idea to
overcome these problems.
This paper focuses on the problem of
formulating part families and machine cells
of cellular manufacturing systems. It differs
from the previous work reviewed above in
that it uses a fuzzy clustering approach
(Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1990) with
extensions instead of fuzzy c-means
algorithms. The fuzzy c-means algorithm
implicitly assumes that the different objects
(machines) are given by means of
coordinates of a p-dimensional space. This is
a restrictive condition in comparison with
the approach proposed in this paper, for
which no representation of machines
and/or parts is required. In fact, only
the distances between objects (machines)
are needed. In addition, each iteration
cycle in the algorithm presented here
performs a loop over all pairs of parts or
machines, whereas fuzzy c-means perform
loops for each part or machine over the
measurement variables.
The proposed fuzzy approach
The fuzzy clustering technique proposed
aims to minimize the objective function
(Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1990):
C =

k
v=1

n
i.j=1
u
2
ij
u
2
jv
d(i. j)
2

n
j=1
u
2
jv
. (4)
Subject to:
[ 490]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
u
iv
_ 0 for i = 1 . . . n; v = 1 . . . k. (5)

v
u
iv
= 1 for i = 1 . . . n. (6)
Constraint (5) ensures that memberships
cannot be negative. Constraint set (6) ensures
that each object has a constant total
membership, distributed over different
clusters.
In general, the classification results can be
represented by the matrix U as:
U = (i)
(k)
1 2 3 . . . K
1
2
3
.
.
.
n
u
11
u
12
u
13
. . . u
1K
u
21
u
22
u
23
. . . u
2K
u
31
u
32
u
33
. . . u
3K
.
.
.
.
.
.
. . .
.
.
.
u
n1
u
n2
u
n3
. . . u
nK
_

_
_

_
.
(7)
This type of classification yields a fuzzy
clustering with K clusters (matrix columns).
It should be noted that some fuzzy clustering
are fuzzier than others. The complete
fuzziness occurs when each object (machine
or part) has equal memberships in all
clusters (1/k) and when each object (machine
or part) has a membership of one in some
clusters, the clustering is entirely hard. To
measure how hard a fuzzy clustering is,
several approaches have been developed such
as:
.
Dunn's partition coefficients (Trauwaert,
1987):
F
k
=

n
i=1

k
v=1
u
2
iv
n
. (8)
.
Non-fuzziness index (Roubens, 1977):
F
/
k
=
kF
k
1
k 1
. (9)
.
Partition coefficient (Bezdek, 1974):
F
c
(U). (10)
.
Separation ratio (Zahid et al., 1999):
SC = SC
1
(U. V : X) SC
2
(U). (11)
The local optima of equation (4) can be
found from the Lagrange equation.
Depending on the Lagrange equation
derivatives with respect to the
membership variables and the
corresponding Kuhan and Tucker
conditions, Kaufman and Rousseeuw
(1990) defined the following
functions:
a
iv
=
2

j
u
2
jv
d(i. j)

j
u
2
jv

h
u
2
hv
u
2
jv
d(h. j)
(

j
u
2
jv
)
2
. (12)

iv
=
1

v
(
iv
,a
iv
)

v
(1,a
iv
)
. (13)
u
iv
=
1,a
iv

w
(1,a
iv
)

iv
a
iv

w
(
iwv
,a
iw
)
a
iv

w
(1,a
iw
).
(14)
a
iv
u
iv

i

iv
= 0. (15)

iv
_ 0. (16)
U
iv

iv
= 0. (17)
where
i
and
jv
are Lagrange multipliers. From
equation (13),
jv
takes two forms, it can be either

jv
= 0 or
jv
0:
If
jv
= 0 then:
u
iv
=
1,a
iv

w
(1,a
iv
)
. (18)
if
jv
0 then at least for some v:
u
iv
= 0. (19)
The partition can be defined as:
V = v; u
iv=0
= v;
1,a
iv

w
(1,a
iw
_ 0
_ _
.
V = v; u
iv0
= v;
1,a
iv

w
(1,a
iw
0
_ _
. (20)
The algorithm
Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990) proposed an
algorithm to solve the fuzzy problem as
follows:
Step 1. Initialize the membership function as:
0
u
iv
for all i = 1. . . . . n and all v = 1 . . . k.
u
iv
_ 0 and

v
u
iv
= 1.
Step 2. For all i = 1. . . . . n.
Step 2.1. Compute
m
a
iv
using equation (3)
for all v = 1 . . . k.
Step 2.2. Compute:
A
v
=
1,
m
a
iv

w
(1,
m
a
iw
)
.
for all v = 1 . . . k.
Step 2.3.
A
v
_ 0 = V = V v.
A
v
0 = V = V v.
Step 2.4. For all v V, put
m1
u
iv
= 0.
Step 2.5. Compute:
m1
u
iv
=
1,
m
a
iv

wV
(1,
m
a
iv
)
for all v V
Step 2.6. Put V = V = c go to step 2.1
with
the next i.
[ 491]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
Step 3. Compute
m1
C by (1). If
m
C
m1
C
1 < c
_ _
.
then go to step 2; otherwise stop.
Extension of the algorithm
The final clustering matrix U provides the
degree or grade of membership of a machine
associated with each machine cell. In this
extension, the final matrix would be used to
Table I
Data for the numerical example
Parts (p)
Machines (i) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
2 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
3 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
4 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
5 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0
6 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
7 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
8 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0
9 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Figure 1
The objective function
Table II
The membership matrix for machines
Memberships for cells
Machines 1 2 3
M1 0.525 0.268 0.207
M2 0.255 0.579 0.167
M3 0.017 0.011 0.972
M4 0.450 0.233 0.316
M5 0.745 0.116 0.138
M6 0.022 0.961 0.017
M7 0.017 0.011 0.972
M8 0.446 0.172 0.381
M9 0.022 0.961 0.017
Table III
The membership matrix of part families
Membership for part families
Parts 1 2 3
P1 0.589 0.213 0.198
P2 0.325 0.439 0.236
P3 0.137 0.087 0.776
P4 0.485 0.171 0.344
P5 0.730 0.110 0.161
P6 0.014 0.975 0.011
P7 0.231 0.147 0.623
P8 0.220 0.113 0.667
P9 0.014 0.975 0.011
Table V
Data input for the second example
Parts (p)
Machines (i) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
6 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0
7 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1
9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
11 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
12 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0
Table VI
The membership matrix for machines
Degree of membership
Machine 1 2 3
M1 0.870 0.069 0.062
M2 0.867 0.069 0.062
M3 0.648 0.186 0.166
M4 0.518 0.257 0.225
M5 0.058 0.887 0.056
M6 0.058 0.887 0.056
M7 0.271 0.500 0.229
M8 0.025 0.026 0.949
M9 0.025 0.026 0.949
M10 0.204 0.215 0.582
M11 0.355 0.439 0.206
M12 0.354 0.439 0.206
Table IV
Comparison of Chu and Hayya's (1991) and
the proposed approaches
Chu and Hayya's
approach
The proposed
approach
Machine
cells
Part
families
Machine
cells
Part
families
Cell-1 M1, M5 P1, P4,
P5
M1, M4,
M5, M8
P1, P4,
P5
Cell-2 M2, M6,
M9
P2, P6,
P9
M2, M6,
M9
P2, P6,
P9
Cell-3 M3, M4,
M7, M8
P3, P7,
P8
M3, M7 P3, P7,
P8
[ 492]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
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[ 493]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
find machine cells and their part families. In
addition, the empty clusters are removed
from final matrix and a performances
measure is used to determine the optimal
number of part families and machine cells.
Avoiding the result in some empty cells
To determine the nonempty machine/part
clusters, the following algorithm can be used:
Let number_of_cells be equal to the
nonempty cells:
1 _number_of_cells _k.
Step 1. Find Max(u
1v
: v = 1, . . ., k) and
Cell(1) =v.
Step 2. Assign machine (1) to cell (1):
number_of_cells = 1:
cell_size(number_of_cells) =1.
Step 3. For each i =2 to n (number of machines)
.
Find Max (u
2v
: v =1, . . ., k), and
determine its related cell =v (using new
cell counter).
.
If v is related to any existing cell then
assign machine i to that cell and
increase the cell size as: (cell_size
(number_of_cells) =cell_size
(number_of_cells) +1) Cell_member
(cell_size (number_of_cells)) =i.
.
Else: construct new cell and assign the
machine i to the new cell and increase
the number of cells
(number_of_cells =number_of_cells +1)
and (cell_size (number_of_cells)) =1,
Cell_member (cell_size
(number_of_cells)) =i.
Step 4. Go to Step 2 with next machine i.
Step 5. Construct the new matrix U for
the nonempty cells.
Designing machine cells and part families
The design of machine cells can be obtained
using the matrix of nonempty cells, as follows:
For nc =1 to number_of_cells
Find Cell_member(cs)
(For cs =1 to cell_size(nc))
Next nc
In the same manner, part families can be
configured using number_of_cells obtained in
the previous section. Each part family can be
assigned to its machine cell.
Numerical examples
In this section, examples from the literature
are considered to illustrate the application of
the proposed fuzzy algorithm in CMS. The
first example from Chu and Hayya (1991) is
illustrated in Table I.
This problem consists of nine machines
and nine parts. In Table I, any entry of 1
indicates that the part (p) visits machine (i).
Using the proposed approach, the algorithm
requires 17 iteration steps, as illustrated in
Figure 1. The final value of objective function
is 2.11.
The final membership matrix for
nonempty machine cells is illustrated in
Table II. These values indicate the degree of
membership of each machine associated with
machine cell.
Machine cells can be configured as:
machine_cell(1) ={M1, M4, M5, M8},
machine_cell(2) ={M2, M6, M9}, and
machine_cell(3) ={M3, M7}.
Similarly, part families can be configured,
as illustrated by the relationship matrix
(Table III).
Therefore, part_family(1) ={P1, P4, P5},
part_family(2) ={P2, P6, P9}, and
part_family={P3, P7, P8}.
Table IV compares Chu and Hayya's (1991)
and the proposed approach results.
As illustrated in the Table, machine cells 1
and 3 are different, when no changes are
observed between part families.
The second example is taken from Susanto
et al. (1999), as shown in Table V.
The obtained results are illustrated in
Table VI: machine_cell(1) ={M1, M2, M3,
M4}, machine_cell(2) ={M5, M6, M7, M11,
Table VIII
Solutions to Venugopal and Narendran's (1993) data set
Number
of cells
Number
of non-
empty
cells Machine cells
Partition
coefficient
of Dunn
2 2 {1 2 3 4 5 7 9 10 11 13 14 16 17 19 20 21 22 23 24} {6 8 12 15 18} 0.52
3 3 {1 3 4 7 9 10 13 14 16 17 20 21 22 23 24} {2 5 11 19} {6 8 12 15 18} 0.59
4 4 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 4 7 9 10 14 16 17 20 23 24} {6 8 12 15 18} 0.57
5 5 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 7 9 10 14 17 20 23 24}{4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} 0.82
6 6 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 7 11 14 19 23 24} {3 20} {4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} {9 10 17} 0.85
7 7 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 20} {4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} {7 14 23 24} {9 10 17} 1
8 7 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 20} {4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} {7 14 23 24} {9 10 17} 1
9 7 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 20} {4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} {7 14 23 24} {9 10 17} 0.98
10 7 {1 13 21 22} {2 5 11 19} {3 20} {4 16} {6 8 12 15 18} {7 14 23 24} {9 10 17} 1
[ 494]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
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9
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9
)
[ 495]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
M12}, and machine_cell(3) ={M8, M9, M10}.
Part families are: part_family(1) ={P1, P2, P3,
P4}, part_family(2) ={P5, P6, P7}, and
part_family(3) ={P8, P9, P10}.
The proposed approach is also tested on
different problems of various sizes. Two large
sized problems are taken from the literature.
In the first example, the CMS problem with
24 machines and 40 parts is considered (Table
VII). Different numbers of manufacturing
cells are used (i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10).
The final solution of this problem is
illustrated in Table VIII. In this example, the
nonempty cells for the selected numbers of
cells (2, 3, 4, and 5) are the same, when the
selected number of cells is 7, 8, 9, or 10. The
number of nonempty cells is 7 with different
configurations, as shown in the Table. To
evaluate the number of cells, Dunn's
partition coefficient from equation (8) is
used. This partition coefficient has been
shown to vary between 1, for hard clusters,
and 1/k for completely fuzzy sets of
machines. Therefore, this presents a measure
of how far is a given fuzzy partition from a
hard one. Table VIII illustrates the Dunn's
partition coefficient values for each selected
number of cells indicating that the optimum
number of cells is 7.
The second example involves 30 machines
and 41 parts, as shown in Table IX. In the
same manner, numbers of desired
manufacturing cells, nonempty cells, and
Dunn's partition coefficient are illustrated in
Table X. These two examples demonstrate the
possibility of using the approach proposed
for large-scale CMS problems, and evaluate
the obtained results (part families and
machines cells) using Dunn's partition
coefficient.
Conclusion
In this paper, a fuzzy clustering approach
with extensions is proposed for selecting part
families and machine cells of CMS. The
proposed approach is more consistent as
compared with conventional clustering and
other fuzzy-c-means algorithms. Fuzzy
c-means algorithm implicitly assumes the
different machines or parts are given by
means of coordinates in a p-dimensional
space, whereas there is no such
representation is needed in the proposed
approach, only the distances between
machines/parts are required. In this paper,
the proposed algorithm is used to form
machine cells and part families
simultaneously and to avoid the
shortcomings of the algorithm, such as the
possibility that the approach will result in
some empty machine cells or part families,
extension procedures are introduced.
The presented numerical examples
confirm the effectiveness of the proposed
approach. It is found that this algorithm
provides a good solution to part-machine
selection in CMS, allowing user flexibility in
formulating the required size of machine
cells and part families.
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Table X
Solutions to the 3041 initial machine/part incidence matrix
Number
of cells
Number of
nonempty
cells Machine cells
Partition
coefficient
of Dunn
2 2 {1 2 3 10 11 12 21 22 23}
{4 5 6 7 8 9 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 24 25 26 27 28 29 30}
0.50
3 3 {1 2 3 10 11 12 21 22 23} {4 13 14}
{5 6 7 8 9 15 16 17 18 19 20 24 25 26 27 28 29 30}
0.33
4 3 {1 2 3 10 11 12 21 22 23} {4 5 7 13 14 15 16 17 18 26}
{6 8 9 19 20 24 25 27 28 29 30}
0.25
5 3 {1 2 3 10 11 12 21 22 23} {4 5 6 7 13 14 15 16 17 18 26}
{8 9 19 20 24 25 27 28 29 30}
0.20
[ 496]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497
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[ 497]
A.M.A. Al-Ahmari
A fuzzy analysis approach for
part-machine grouping in
cellular manufacturing
systems
Integrated Manufacturing
Systems
13/7 [2002] 489497