DESIGN OF CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS BASED ON ASYMPTOTIC FORMS OFA BOOLEAN MATRIX

The formation of cells is a vital aspect of the design of Cellular Man ufacturing Systems. This paper addresses the problem using the concept of asymptotic forms of a Boolean matrix. It is shown that mutually in dependent cells for a given machine-component incidence matrix A exist if and only if B = A A(T) is not a primitive matrix. Based on asymp totic forms of a Boolean matrix, a method to identify machine cells an d part families, in case mutually independent cells exist, is develope d. The paper also includes an algorithm to identify the bottleneck mac hines and parts, when mutually independent cells do not exist. Finally , a general method that can be used by designers of CMS to form mutual ly independent cells is presented.