A hybrid heuristic algorithm adopting both Boltzmann function and mutation operator for manufacturing cell formation problems

This study proposes a hybrid heuristic algorithm employing both the Boltzmann function from simulated annealing and the mutation operator from the genetic algorithm to explore the unvisited solution region and expedite the solution searching process for the cell formation problem, so that grouping efficacy is maximized. Test problems drawn from the literature are used to test the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm. The comparative study shows that the proposed algorithm improves the best results found in the literature for 36% of the test problems in the case when singletons solutions are allowed.