Abstract
Grouping parts into families which can be produced by a cluster of machine cells is the cornerstone of cellular manufacturing, which in turn is the building block for flexible manufacturing systems. Cellular manufacturing is a group technology (GT) concept that has recently attracted the attention of manufacturing firms operating under jobshop environment to consider redesigning their manufacturing systems so as to take advantage of increased throughput, reduction in work-in-progress, set-up time, and lead times; leading to product quality and customer satisfaction. The paper presents a generalised approach for machine cell formation from a jobshop using similarity order clustering technique for preliminary cell grouping and considering machine utilisation for the design of nonintergrouping material handling using the single-pass heuristic. The work addresses the shortcomings of cellular manufacturing systems design and implementations which ignore machine utilisations, group sizes and intergroup moves.
Highlights
Many manufacturing firms which hitherto satisfied their customers while operating jobshop production systems have recently had to rethink because of the superiority of group technology (GT)
In flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), the corresponding cluster of machines is referred to as flexible manufacturing cell (FMC), while at lower level in the classical GT physical cells, the cluster of machines is ordinarily referred to as manufacturing celL Since manufacturing cell is the building block of FMC, the discussion in the remaining sections of this paper concentrate on machine and part families grouping without loss of generality
' So far, existing standard cell formation models have been reviewed: these~odeis ignore .key factors such as machine utilisations, group sizes, and exceptional elements. ' This study describes a formulation based on similarity order clustering (SOC) for grouping of machines' and parts [26] with the inclusion of single-pass heuristic to solve -the problems inherent in standard cell formation models
Summary
Many manufacturing firms which hitherto satisfied their customers while operating jobshop production systems have recently had to rethink because of the superiority of group technology (GT). Planning and scheduling FMS at the disaggregate level involves machines, parts and additional components such as tools, fixtures , grippers and material handling components. The costs of these components are usually high and they- may be in limited quantities. Individual part families are manufactured by machine groups which utilise associated components such as the tools, fixtures, grippers and material handling components already mentioned. In FMS, the corresponding cluster of machines is referred to as flexible manufacturing cell (FMC), while at lower level in the classical GT physical cells, the cluster of machines is ordinarily referred to as manufacturing celL Since manufacturing cell is the building block of FMC, the discussion in the remaining sections of this paper concentrate on machine and part families grouping without loss of generality
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