Application of Soft Computing Techniques for Cell Formation Considering Operational Time and Sequence

Abstract

In response to demand in market place, discrete manufacturing firms need to adopt batch type manufacturing for incorporating continuous and rapid changes in manufacturing to gain edge over competitors. In addition, there is an increasing trend toward achieving higher level of integration between design and manufacturing functions in industries to make batch manufacturing more efficient and productive. In batch shop production environment, the cost of manufacturing is inversely proportional to batch size and the batch size determines the productivity. In real time environment, the batch size of the components is often small leading to frequent changeovers, larger machine idleness and so lesser productivity. To alleviate these problems, “Cellular Manufacturing Systems” (CMS) can be implemented to accommodate small batches without loosing much of production run time. Cellular manufacturing is an application of group technology (GT) in which similar parts are identified and grouped togeth...