Cell formation is a crucial problem in the design of cellular manufacturing systems and has a decisive effect on productivity and cost. The similarity coefficient method is the most widely used to solve this problem because of its flexibility and computational efficiency. Although various similarity coefficient methods have been developed in the literature, few of these methods consider the factor of operation sequence with repeated operations, which may cause more material intercell movements. To fill this research gap, this study presents an improved similarity coefficient method for designing machine groups in the first stage. Subsequently, a modified part assignment strategy is proposed for forming cells to achieve a higher compatibility with the improved similarity coefficient method. Finally, problems from previous studies are employed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Comparison results testify that the proposed method is sensitive and efficient for solving the cell formation problem.

细胞形成是细胞制造系统设计中的一个关键问题，对生产力和成本具有决定性影响。相似系数法因其灵活性和计算效率而被最广泛地用于解决该问题。尽管文献中已经开发了各种相似系数方法，但这些方法很少考虑重复操作的操作顺序因素，这可能会导致更多的物质单元间移动。为了填补这一研究空白，本研究提出了一种改进的相似系数方法，用于设计第一阶段的机器组。随后，提出了一种改进的部件分配策略来形成单元，以实现与改进的相似系数方法的更高兼容性。最后，以前研究中的问题被用来证明所提出方法的性能。比较结果证明，所提出的方法对于解决细胞形成问题是敏感和有效的。