Modified Rank Order Clustering Algorithm Approach by Including Manufacturing Data

A modified rank order clustering (MROC) method based on weight and data reorganization has been developed to facilitate the needs of real world manufacturing environment. MROC is designed to optimize the manufacturing process based on important independent variables with weights and reorganize the machine-component data that helps form cells where each cell would have approximately the same work load. The developed algorithm using a heuristics minimizes number of bottlenecks for the cellular solution without human input (necessary in King {1980)), while ensuring comparable machine utilizations in each cell. This paper describes our proposed algorithm and a solution to the machine cell design process for the real world manufacturing environment.