PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS - A TAXONOMYAND REVIEW OF RESEARCH

The performance of cellular manufacturing (CM) systems has been rigoro usly investigated during the last two decades. The findings from these studies need to be systematically tabulated, given that they span a w ide range of systems and experimental conditions. Some of the findings have also not been in agreement with the prescriptive literature on g roup technology (GT). No such survey of research exists to date. Attem pts to fill the void by providing a taxonomy that categorizes these st udies into simulation-based, analytical and empirical studies. Also di scusses past work in the context of various experimental factors and c onditions, such as system configurations assumed, setup and operation times, scheduling rules, lot sizes and performance measures used. Summ arizes major findings from each stream of literature from the point of view of both researchers and practitioners.