National Institute of Technology Calicut

Department of Mechanical Engineering

FACTORS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR CELL AND PART FAMILY FORMATION

Inter-cell material handling exceptional element Product demand Static Dynamic

Demand variability during the life of the design Demand variation as the product pass through various stages in the life cycle During the life of the design Product mix varies Product demand varies randomly Lumpy demand characteristics in MRP environment

Generally, a deterministic demand estimate of products are used in design High demand item should get more priority compared to a low demand item. For instance: if the design objective is minimization of inter-cell material handling, a high demand item, that flows to different cells to complete its processing requirement, causes more inter cell moves compared to a low demand item.

Operation sequence Machine types number of machines of each type Machine utilization operation time Deterministic or probabilistic Investment requirement Machine (operation) characteristics relocation difficulty, one-of-a-kind, very expensive, special operation, etc Group size - Cell size and part family size Layout consideration

Groups formed by a method may be provisional, as the method does not consider all the factors relevant to the problem environment Final decision about grouping and layout require considerable additional analysis.

KEY MACHINE APPROACH

Key machine machines that are one-of-a-kind, perform special operation, are difficult to relocate, are very expensive and so on

Factors to be Considered for Cell and Part Family Formation

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March 2013

National Institute of Technology Calicut

Department of Mechanical Engineering

This approach starts by identifying key machines Parts that require processing on the key machines are identified Each such part is examined to determine all other machines needed to process it These other machines then become candidate for inclusion in the group with key machine This may lead to formation of large and impractical cells Some way is needed to constrain the number of machines to be admitted into a cell Machines that have a somewhat high percentage of products in common are allowed together in a cell use Jacards similarity coefficient Identify the minimum similarity value for including a machine in the key machine group Another measure for assigning machines to key machine is utilization Generally two measures of utilization that are of interest in a GT cell with key machine concept Utilization of the key machine and utilization of the overall cell Utilization can be defined as the proportion of time that the facility is operating relative to the time available Another definition: in terms of quantity

U=

Q PC
U utilization of the facility Q actual quantity produced by the facility during a given period (pieces/wk) PC production capacity for the same period (pieces/wk)

where

Cell utilization is obtained by taking a simple arithmetic average of all the machines in the cell Appropriate criteria may be selected to assign machines, like: Minimum key machine utilization and cell utilization, Maximize key machine utilization and minimum level for cell utilization, Maximize key machine utilization Assign machines to key machine based on the utilization of key machine if the machine added increase the utilization of key machine/cell, etc.

Factors to be Considered for Cell and Part Family Formation

53

March 2013

National Institute of Technology Calicut

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Example Problem
Identify the machine group based on the key machine approach for the following machine part matrix. Use key machine approach and Jacards similarity. Threshold value of similarity is 0.5 Key machines - first consider C and then B Part Machine 1 A B C D 1 E F 1 G H 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 7 8 1 1 9 1

1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

Solution
A B C D E F G H A 0 B 3/4 0 C 1/6 1/7 0 D 0 0 0 0 E 2/3 1/2 1/5 0 0 F 0 0 1/6 2/3 0 0 G 3/5 4/5 2/7 0 2/5 1/7 0 H 0 0 3/4 0 0 1/5 1/7 0

Consider the first key machine C Group the machines whose similarity coefficient with machine C greater than equal to 0.5 Group C & H Consider second key machine B Group the machines whose similarity coefficient with machine B greater than equal to 0.5 Such machines are A, E & G Group B, A, E & G Machines D and F are not assigned and the similarity coefficient between them is above 0.5 hence group these two machines.

Factors to be Considered for Cell and Part Family Formation

54

March 2013

National Institute of Technology Calicut

Department of Mechanical Engineering

QUESTION: 1. What are the factors to be considered while designing a cellular manufacturing system? 2. How do you restrict the number of machines admitted to a cell in a key machine based grouping? 3. Identify the machine group based on the key machine approach for the following machine part matrix. Use key machine approach and Jacards similarity. Threshold value of similarity is 0.5. Key machines - first consider C and then F Machine A B C D E F G H 1 Part 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1

4. A production system has 8 machines (Namely A to H) which are used to produce 8 parts (1, 2, ..., 8). The machine cells are formed based on the key machine approach. Use Jacards similarity for grouping decision. Key machines are C and B. First consider machine C and then B while grouping. Based on these details cells formed are cell 1 and cell 2. The first cell contains machines C, D, F and H. The second cell contains machines A, B, E and G. The route matrix for the production system is given below. The route matrix shows the operation number. For example, the first operation of part 1 is in machine C and its second operation is in machine D and so on. (i) Determine the part family corresponding to the machine cells. Describe your logic of assigning a part to a part family. Part Machine 1 2 3 4 A 2 B 5 C 1 3 6 D 2 2 3 E 1 F 4 1 1 G 4 4 H 3 5 5 6 7 8 2 2 3 3 2 2 4 3 1 1 1 1

Factors to be Considered for Cell and Part Family Formation

55

March 2013

National Institute of Technology Calicut

Department of Mechanical Engineering

(ii)

Let us assume that we had a group of machines such as group 1 with machines B and G and a second group with machines C, D and H. Determine similarity between these two groups using average linkage.

(iii) For the data given above determine the part families and machine cells using rank order clustering.

Factors to be Considered for Cell and Part Family Formation

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