A methodology for cellular manufacturing design

A two-phase methodology is presented as an aid to organizing job shop production in a cellular manufacturing system. The first phase (selection/assignment phase) selects the machines to be kept on the shop floor and assigns parts to the machines retained. The second phase (partition/reassignment phase) establishes a partition of the set of parts and corresponding cells of machines and reassigns some of the operations with a view to eliminating some intercell material movements. This phase is repeated until a partition meeting the operator's requirements is obtained. The results obtained with this method on several examples found in the literature are consistently equivalent to or even better than those hitherto proposed, in terms of intercell moves.