Manufacturing cell loading rules and algorithms for connected cells

Abstract

Cellular Manufacturing (CM) can be defined as the implementation of group technology (GT) principles in a manufacturing environment. Situations that require decisions can be grouped together based on pre-selected, commonly shared criteria, and decision that applies to one situation in the group will apply to all of them in that group. The application of GT to manufacturing is achieved by identifying the items with either similar design or manufacturing characteristics and grouping them into families of like items. The benefits derived from CM include reduced work-in-process inventory and setup time, improved product quality, easier scheduling, better visibility of product schedule status, and quicker feedback of manufacturing deficiencies. The chapter discusses control of manufacturing cells, search priority primary product rule, secondary product rules, primary cell rules, number of feasible products (NFP), product mix (PM), and common cell capacity. The rules described are combined in different ways and 48 possible combinations are created. Twenty-four of the rule combinations are of cell priority type and the remaining 24 are of product priority type.