Shop Floor Layout Research Articles

A design methodology for fractal layout organization

Venkatadri el a.(HE Transactions, 29, 911-924, 1997) have proposed a new methodology for shop floor layout that involves the use of fractal cells and have compared the performance of their new layout with those obtained using the function, group and holographic layouts. A few inconsistencies are present in their results, expressed as flow scores. This note points out these inconsistencies through the use of appropriate examples.

A design methodology for fractal layout organization

Venkatadri et al. (IIE Transactions, 29, 911–924, 1997) have proposed a new methodology for shop floor layout that involves the use of fractal cells and have compared the performance of their new layout with those obtained using the function, group and holographic layouts. A few inconsistencies are present in their results, expressed as flow scores. This note points out these inconsistencies through the use of appropriate examples.

Inheritance and polymorphism in real-time monitoring and control systems

Most recent researches into an object oriented design approach for the development of real-time Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) applications have concentrated on object identification and object classification. These techniques, however, may only be considered as an object-based paradigm. In the true object-oriented paradigm, object characteristics such as data encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism must also be considered. This paper introduces a design paradigm for developing a SCADA system through the true object oriented design methodology. To complete the design, a hierarchical object-oriented design (HOOD) tree is used to map the physical shop floor layout to a logical layout for formulating the basic object hierarchy. The active components and control logic in the SCADA models are manipulated by a newly derived script language called CONTROL-C++ proposed by the author. To verify the proposed model, a newly designed software system is implemented and justified in terms of system completeness and soundness.

Automatic determination of operation sequence for material handling and equipment set-up in one-of-a-kind production

For the control of material handling and equipment setup on the shop floor, the sequences of operations such as providing, storing, maintaining, setting up and down production resources, need to be determined according to the layout and production system configuration of the shop floor. In the case of frequent changes of shop floor layout to produce different products in 'one-of-a-kind production' OKP , the sequence of operations will also change frequently. This frequent change of operation sequence creates a conflict between the robustness of the control system structure and the flexibility of the production system configuration in the automatic control of material handling and equipment set-up. To solve this problem, a number of new concepts, such as the service task logic route, the logic layout graph of shop floor, the address code of production resource, etc., are presented. Based on these new concepts, the layout of a shop floor can be expressed by retrievable data in a database. Using this retrievable data the control system can automatically determine the sequence of operations and adapt to changes of shop floor layout without changes in the control system structure.

Automated Computer-Aided Layout Planning for Robot Workcells

Abstract This text presents an approach for planning robot workcells in three dimensions fully automatically. This automation is possible by a complete layout planning process inside the configuration space. To reach a sufficient shop floor layout in a short time, the cartesian configuration space and fast obstacle transformation routines are employed. An optimization algorithm minimizes the length of all collision free paths required for the performance of the workcell task. A final check by a graphical workcell task simulation, whether the layout is valid or not, is no longer required. This new planning approach enhances the conventional layout planning process and reduces the amount of necessary user interaction.

Planning the introduction and predicting the benefits of group technology

A large multi-national company involved in the manufacture of capital equipment, with production facilities in the U.K., recently undertook a study into the benefits of shop floor layout based on product organization in a proposed ‘focused factory’ for the manufacture of transmission gears and shafts. This paper describes the work carried out, in particular the method for predicting the likely benefits and that for determining machine groups and part families.