Configuration of Manufacturing Cells for Dynamic Manufacturing

Classical approach to the formation of manufacturing cells is based on the application of similarity principles to a binary machine-part matrix. This approach ignores volume effect as well as dynamic demand pattern. This paper first identifies and characterises the volume effect based on two measures of manufacturing cell efficiency, i.e., average job flow time and total intercell travelling time. The effect of similarity coefficient threshold value on cell configuration based on binary and volume data was evaluated and tested statistically. Finally, the implication of cell configuration on systems performance under dynamic demand pattern is discussed with an example based on 80 machines and 820 parts.