A REVIEW OF CURRENT RESEARCH IN MANUFACTURING SHOP DESIGN INTEGRATION

The importance of the manufacturing shop design in the successful oper ation of a production system is well documented and, as a result, sign ificant work has been devoted to this area. Due to the inherent comple xity of the global shop design problem, much research has focused on i ndividual sub-problems, including the layout of manufacturing resource s, the design of the shop aisle network, and the selection of the mate rial handling equipment, rather than addressing the integrated problem directly. This paper reviews literature contributions to shop design integration, as well as partial integration schemes such as the design for operation and control of material handling systems. Furthermore, it examines the ability of models and solution approaches for individu al sub-problems of shop design to support integration schemes. (C) 199 8 Chapman & Hall.