A mathematical model in cellular manufacturing system considering subcontracting approach under constraints

Article history: Received March 29, 2012 Received in Revised form June, 18, 2012 Accepted 20 July 2012 Available online August 1 2012 In this paper, a new mathematical model in cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) has been presented. In order to increase the performance of manufacturing system, the production quantity of parts has been considered as a decision variable, i.e. each part can be produced and outsourced, simultaneously. This extension would be minimized the unused capacity of machines. The exceptional elements (EEs) are taken into account and would be totally outsourced to the external supplier in order to remove intercellular material handling cost. The problem has been formulated as a mixed-integer programming to minimize the sum of manufacturing variable costs under budget, machines capacity and demand constraints. Also, to evaluate advantages of the model, several illustrative numerical examples have been provided to compare the performance of the proposed model with the available classical approaches in the literature. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.