Actually, lean manufacturing is a must to improve productivity and reduce cost. One of the tools of lean is cellular manufacturing. This technique subdivides the factory to several small entities, which are easier to manage. The algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the simultaneous resolution of two interdependent problems. These two problems emerge when the notion of flexibility is int...

The application of high-bandwidth networks and cloud computing in manufacturing systems will be followed by mass data. Industrial data analysis plays important roles in condition monitoring, performance optimization, flexibility, and transparency of the manufacturing system. However, the currently existing architectures are mainly for offline data analysis, not suitable for real-time data proce...

Sequencing is perhaps the single most important production planning routine for mix flexibility achievement on a shared manufacturing resource. However, unlike discrete manufacturing, there are limited prescribed techniques for sequencing routines in process manufacturing. This paper explores sequencing via the product wheel technique through its application in two case studies.

One of the crucial steps in the design of a cellular manufacturing system is the cell formation problem, which involves grouping the parts into part families and machines into manufacturing cells, so that parts with similar processing requirements are manufactured within the same cell. When modelling this problem it is usually assumed that the specific machine in which each operation is carried...

The production scheduling process in manufacturing systems is a complex problem in which finding a suitable production scheduling can extremely increase the effectiveness of highly flexible production processes. Nevertheless, this high flexibility makes the production scheduling and acquisition of relevant data quite complicated. Therefore, there is a strong demand for a universal and flexible ...

Group technology (GT) is a useful way to increase productivity with high quality in flexible manufacturing systems. Cell formation (CF) is a key step in GT. It is used to design a good cellular manufacturing system that uses the similarity measure between parts and machines so that it can identify part families and machine groups. Recently, fuzzy clustering has been applied in GT because the fu...

Advanced 300-mm ASIC/SOC (application-specific integrated circuit/system on a chip) fabrication plants with multiproduct and multiprocess models will require both a high level of flexibility and efficiency to achieve cost-effective manufacturing cycle times. Today, potential solutions to achieve breakthrough manufacturing cycle times are under consideration. Given the dynamic nature of all of t...

Virtual reality (VR) has become an important and useful tool in science and engineering. VR applications cover a wide range of industrial areas from product design to analysis, from product prototyping to manufacturing. The design and manufacturing of a product can be viewed, evaluated and improved in a virtual environment before its prototype is made, which is an enormous cost saving. Virtual ...