GT efficacy: a performance measure for cell formation with sequence data

Abstract

Cell formation in cell manufacturing design is a crucial step for improving productivity. As input data for the cell formation problem, a part-machine incidence matrix is given in binary format or in ordinal format. The solutions for effective cell formation have to be compared using performance measures. Grouping efficacy is used as a standard measure for evaluating solutions based on a binary part-machine matrix, which does not consider ordinal data. However, the representative measures, called standard measures, for the ordinal part-machine matrix are absent. The existing measures designed for ordinal data produce conflicting results and can lead to subjective decisions. In this paper, a new objective measure called group technology (GT) efficacy is proposed for ordinal data, reflecting on both intercellular movement and compactness within cells simultaneously. The advantage of GT efficacy is demonstrated by comparing it with a few previously-proposed measures.