Neural Network and Cellular Manufacturing

Reports that cellular manufacturing is a production techniques where parts processed on similar machines are grouped into manufacturing cells. These clusterings have been found to reduce production costs,improve quality and generate other benefits for businesses. Mathematically, the formulation of manufacturing cells is equivalent to transforming a matrix representing the association of machine and parts into a block diagonal form. The pattern recognition capabilities of a neural network were used to transform matrices to represent manufacturing cells. The results are likely to be more robust than using standard heuristics based on specific assumptions.