REDESIGNING A CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEM TO HANDLE LONG-TERM DEMAND CHANGES - A METHODOLOGY AND INVESTIGATION

Cellular manufacturing systems have been proposed as an alternative to the job shop since they provide some of the operational benefits of a flow line production process, while retaining to some extent the flex ibility of job shops. However, this must be balanced against the possi bility of additional initial investments in equipment to form the cell s and a certain loss in manufacturing flexibility, particularly in ter ms of the ability to deal with long-term demand changes. This paper pr esents a model-based heuristic cell system redesign methodology to dea l with such demand changes. The methodology is validated and applied t o system designs generated from several data sets published in the lit erature. Results show that different kinds of demand changes incur dis tinct kinds of costs. Further, characteristics of cell designs that ca n handle long-term demand changes at least cost are identified.