Simulation of manufacturing cells with unreliable machines

Abstract

Cellular manufacturing is an application of a group technology used to improve the performance of manufacturing systems. A number of factors, including vulnerability to machine breakdown, under utilization of resources and eventual unbalanced workload distribution in a multi-cell plan disturb the smooth working of the factory when using the group technology concept. This paper focuses on a manufacturing cell composed of unreliable machines. We are interested in the problem of cell production availability facing unexpected circumstances due to an internal perturbation caused by machine breakdown. We consider a policy of intercellular transfer in the event of breakdown to improve the availability of the cells. We examine through simulation the performance of the system and evaluate the intercellular transfer policy in terms of some selected criteria. The results indicate, under the assumed conditions, that the developed policy improves the performance of the production cells. (Received in November 2005, accepted in August 2006. This paper was with the authors 2 months for 1 revision.)