A Two-phase model for configuring a cellular manufacturing system is proposed. In phase (I), for the first time, number of cells is considered as a decision variable. In phase (II), pursing two different objectives, one minimization of underload and the other, maximization of similarity of parts within a group, the design procedure is performed. As one cannot have these two objects together, a ...

  This paper deals with the cellular manufacturing system (CMS) that is based on group technology concepts. CMS is defined as identifying the similar parts that are processed on the same machines and then grouping them as a cell. The most proposed models for solving CMS are focused on cell formation problem while machine layout is considered in few papers. This paper addresses a mathematical mo...

This paper presents a new mathematical model to solve cell formation problem in cellular manufacturing systems, where inter-arrival time, processing time, and machine breakdown time are probabilistic. The objective function maximizes the number of operations of each part with more arrival rate within one cell. Because a queue behind each machine; queuing theory is used to formulate the model. T...

Cellular manufacturing systems are used when both production volume and product variety are at medium level. The fluctuations of volume and mix can reduce drastically the performance of classical cellular manufacturing systems. Therefore, several configurations have been proposed in literature as virtual manufacturing cells, fractal cells and remainder cells. This paper investigates the cell lo...

This paper deals with the transient analysis of manufacturing systems in the presence of failures and repairs. The exact model is decomposed into 1) a structure state process, modeling the failure and repair events which occur at a slower time scale, and 2) a performance model, modeling the part processing and material movement events occurring at a faster time scale. The solutions of these two...

The Cell Formation Problem is a crucial component of a cell production design in a manufacturing system. This problem consists of a set of product parts to be manufactured in a group of machines. The objective is to build manufacturing clusters by associating part families with machine cells, with the aim of minimizing the inter-cellular movements of parts by grouping efficacy measures. We pres...

In recent years, artificial neural networks have been applied to solve a variety of problems in numerous areas of manufacturing at both system and process levels. The manufacturing applications of neural networks comprise the design of manufacturing systems (including part-family and machine-cell formation for cellular manufacturing systems); modeling, planning, and scheduling of manufacturing ...

This study investigates the practice of manufacturing flexibility in small and medium sized firms. Using the data collected from 87 firms from machinery and machine tool industries in Taiwan, we analyzed and prescribed the alignment of various manufacturing flexibility dimensions with business strategies. Several practical approaches to developing manufacturing flexibility in small and medium s...