Adib Hosseini - MSc, Department of Industrial Engineering, Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, Babol, Iran
Mohammad Mahdi Mohammad Mahdi - Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran
Iraj Mahdavi - Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, Babol, Iran
Javid Jouzdani - PhD, Department of Industrial Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is one of the most important subfields in the design of manufacturing systems. As a recently emerged field ofstudy and practice, virtual cellular manufacturing (VCM) is of enormous importance as one of the types of CM . One kind of VCM problems is VCM with alternative processing routes from which the route for processing each part should be selected. In this study, a biobjective mathematical programming model is designed in order to obtain optimal routing of parts, the layout of machines and the assignment of cells to locations while minimizing the production costs and balancing the cell loads. The proposed mathematical model is solved by multi-choice goal programming (MCGP). Since CM models are NP-Hard, a genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to solve the model for large-sized problem instances and the results obtained from both methods are compared. Finally, a conclusion is reached and some suggestions for future works are offered.

Virtual Cellular Manufacturing, Mathematical Programming, Multi-Choice Goal Programming, Genetic Algorithm