A NOVEL MACHINE GROUPING AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACH FOR CELLULAR MANUFACTURING

In this paper, three general approaches used to form machine cells and part families in a cellular manufacturing system are addressed. The p rinciple that underlines the machine chaining problem when using a mac hine grouping approach to derive a CM solution is discussed. A model t o improve it is developed and its results compared with existing algor ithms are analyzed. In order to consider some practical constraints in a CM environment, a prototype of a knowledge-based system (KBS) is pr esented. The proposed KBS has the flexibility for users to consider CM problems by including three types of practical constraints: maximum s ize of machine cells, technological constraints, and desired total num ber of machine cells. The KBS system is coded in PASCAL and can be use d on a PC. The proposed model and KBS system are illustrated by numeri cal examples.