In this paper we develop a mathematical model to capture the complexity of important planning problem inGroupTechnology (GT) Manufacturing Systems, namely, cell formation and part routing selection. Research published so far treats the problem independently in a hierarchical manner. We treat it as equally important decisions and develop a 0–1 integer programming formulation to select part routing and to form cells.The processing time and the machines required to complete processing for seven parts were found out from the routing card of each part. The cell schedule was found using the Shortest Processing Time [SPT] for minimizing makespan. The optimal performance was then established and measured using three different techniques.

Full text: IJEIR-377 Final N.pdf