Concurrently part-machine groups formation with important production data

Abstract

This work presents an algorithm for design of cellular manufacturing system. It considers sequence of operation for every component as ordinal level data. The ratio level data includes operation time per unit, production volume and machine capacity. A matrix model is developed to incorporate ordinal level data and ratio level data. Model is then standardized. From this, Part – Part correlation model is formed. This is undergone through principle component analysis. Now, Feature-Vector and New Standardized Sequence Part Load matrices are formed. These are used for grouping purpose. Part-machine orthographic view is used for concurrent part-machine family formation. Performance of algorithm is comparable and of good quality with existing methods in its class. To facilitate industrial application, it can be implemented by using free software, Scilab and/or commercial softwares. (Received in November 2008, accepted in June 2009. This paper was with the authors 1 month for 1 revision.)