CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEM BASED ON NEW SIMILARITY COEFFICIENT WHICH CONSIDERS ALTERNATIVE ROUTES DURING MACHINE FAILURE

A two-phase procedure for configuring a cellular manufacturing system is proposed. In Phase I, a new similarity coefficient which considers the number of alternative routes when available during machine failure is proposed. The objective of Phase I is to identify part families ba sed on the proposed new similarity coefficient. In Phase II, a new met hodology which simultaneously considers scheduling and operational asp ects in the cell design during machine failure for a manufacturing env ironment is proposed. Phase II shows how the scheduling and operationa l aspects influence the resource utilization during machine failure. T he objective of the proposed methodology is to minimize the total sum of inventory holding cost, early/late finish penalty cost for each par t in a given period, operating cost and machine investment cost by gro uping machines into cells. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.