DESIGN OF MANUFACTURING CELLS FOR FLEXIBLE ENVIRONMENT CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE ROUTEING

In flexible manufacturing system (FMS), it is common that most machines are multi-purpose and are capable of performing more than one operation, which makes parts rerouteing possible. In addition, due to scheduling constraints, re-routeing is often desirable. Also, interruptions in production activity due to machines failure from time to time is a common problem, and that too requires parts rerouteing to meet the due-date requirements. Historically, machine grouping procedures do not consider alternative routeings that a part may undergo during the operational phase of the system. When a part is rerouted, it adversely affects the cell performance. The existing procedures for machine cells formation in cellular manufacturing have not taken these factors into consideration. In this research, a new heuristic procedure is developed which provides the flexibility of incorporating alternative routeings in the system's design phase itself. To illustrate the validity of this heuristic, a case example problem is developed using a manufacturing planning software (MANUPLAN) from General Dynamics. The results confirmed that the proposed heuristic procedure outperforms other existing methods.