WORST-CASE ANALYSIS OF AN ALGORITHM FOR CELLULAR MANUFACTURING

Two measures for the efficiency of grouping in cellular manufacturing are discussed in this paper. We first analyze the effectiveness of the first measure, grouping efficiency. A worst case bound is then derived for the minimum spanning tree algorithm with respect to this measure. We then show a newly proposed measure, grouping efficacy, is not suitable from an algorithmic point of view. A weighted grouping efficacy is then proposed and worst case bounds are derived with respect to this new measure. We also propose several policies to improve grouping efficiency and grouping efficacy during the decomposition of larger machine cells. Computational results will also be presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these measures and the worst case bounds.