Approach to the production environment design task within factory coordination

In a discrete parts batch manufacturing environment, there are different data flows concerning the design of products and manufacturing facilities, customer orders, purchase of materials, production control and delivery of orders. Traditionally, because of the functional allocation of tasks within an organization, there is little integration of information between the production control task and the design of manufacturing facilities. One of the objectives of the design of manufacturing facilities tasks is to efficiently organize a production environment to manufacture a range of products. With a greater relationship between these two tasks, we feel that the complexity of the production control task is reduced. This reduction in complexity arises from a reduction in the range of possible problems that can occur and an increase in the predictability of events through more effective organization of a production environment. Factory coordination is part of an approach to shopfloor control which recognizes this principle by establishing a relationship between the design of a production environment and the control of product flow throughout a factory. This relationship is established through a modular architecture for factory coordination. The production environment design element of the architecture for factory coordination is concentrated on. Using a methodology for describing systems, known as SADT, three main tasks associated with this approach are described; process planning, maintenance of a cellular layout, and manufacturing systems analysis.