Machine-Part Formation for Cellular Manufacturing in Group Technology: An Application for Furniture Company

Abstract

Group technology’s basic logic is grouping and producing products of the same type together. An important reason behind Group Technology becoming such an important topic is that nowadays companies have quite an extensive range and workshop type production has increased. Both fuzzy clustering and rank order clustering methods use for grouping parts and machines based on a part-machine matrix created from the production flow technique in order to increase productivity and reduce cost and workmanship required. In this study, Group Technology techniques such as the rank order clustering and fuzzy clustering methods were applied in order to increase the efficiency of the production line, reduce transportation between machines, and form a machine-parts groups in the wood cutting department of a furniture company producing modular furniture in Istanbul. The TOPSIS method was used to determine which products to take into account. According to results of the study, it is shown that fuzzy clustering method has overperformed rank order clustering method based on the evaluation criteria which are group productivity with 21,36%, group efficiency with 43,21% and grouping measure with 82,33%.