Cellular Manufacturing

xv

Preface

In today’s business world, competitiveness denes the industrial leading

edge. The drive toward maximum efciency is constantly at the forefront

of such companies’ objectives. Engineering professionals across the coun-

try are striving to adopt Lean manufacturing practices to help address

worries about their bottom line. Cellular manufacturing is one staple of

Lean manufacturing.

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is an approach that helps build a vari-

ety of products with as little waste as possible. A cell is a group of work-

stations, machine tools, or equipment arranged to create a smooth ow

so families of parts can be processed progressively from one workstation

to another without waiting for a batch to be completed or requiring addi-

tional handling between operations. Put simply, cellular manufacturing

integrates machinery and a small team of staff, directed by a team leader,

so all the work on a product or part can be accomplished in the same cell,

which eliminates resources that do not add value to the product.

Cellular manufacturing is a modern manufacturing system that

incorporates group technology (GT) principles. Cellular manufacturing is

a reorganizational manufacturing system of the traditional complex job-

shop and ow- shop manufacturing systems. The efcient ow of material

through a manufacturing process and its physical plant reduces material

handling costs and creates a more orderly work environment. Sometimes,

a group of operations can be conveniently grouped together so that raw

material enters one end and nished products exit the other end. In addi-

tion, they may be arranged in a physical layout that reduces manual

labor input. Such a grouping of equipment and operations is known as

a “production cell.” Compared to discontinuous ow through discrete

operations, material ow in cells is improved. Savings opportunities arise

from the elimination of downtime between operations, decreased mate-

rial handling costs, decreased work- in- progress inventory and associated

costs, reduced opportunity for handling errors, decreased downtime

spent waiting for supplies or materials, and reduced losses from defective

or obsolete products.

xvi Preface

Decision making under risk and decision making under uncertainty

are applied to cellular manufacturing, specically in the machine cell for-

mation step. The application works with part demand, which can be either

expressed in a probability distribution (probabilistic production volume)

or not expressed in probability distribution, where only the different pos-

sible values for volume that can occur are known (uncertain production

volume). Decision making under risk is used to help the designer select

the best cell arrangement in the case of probabilistic production volume,

whereas decision making under uncertainty is used to help the designer

select the best cell arrangement in the case of uncertain production vol-

ume. The objective of the design methodology has been to maximize the

prot imposed by the resource capacities constraints.

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incorporating decision making under risk into cellular manufacturing.

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