RE-based Equipment Weighted Distributed Layout Designing And Virtual Cellular Formation

Virtual Cellular Manufacturing System (Virtual Cellular Manufacturing System,VCMS) as one of the Group Technology’ mainly application have got many scholars’favour in recent years. Virtual cellular manufacturing system respond quickly to changes inproduct demand by using the resource dynamic logic group, generate virtual cells to taskprocessing, retained the function layout flexibility and overcome the physical layout resetlimitation of traditional cell of manufacturing system, greatly improve the flexibility andperformance level of the manufacturing. Virtual cellular manufacturing system flexiblecharacteristics, mainly thanks to the flexibility of virtual cell resource sharing, butcomparing the characteristics of virtual cell and conventional unit manufacturing system,structure virtual cellular manufacturing system on the layout of the cell in the traditionalproduction mode often can cause parts processing transportation distance increases, also thecost of production and manufacturing processing costs. Accordingly, for a new factoryproduction workshop equipment layout problems, which will using the virtualmanufacturing system, proposed a new weighted distributed layout, building virtual cellmanufacturing system on new layout, satisfy virtual cell manufacturing system flexibilityand efficiency requirements, and cut costs on the material handling of parts processing. Forthe design and construction of virtual cell layout, use the general processing capacity of theunit-resources (Resource Elements, RE) to represent the concept of unique and sharedequipment capacity as well as the parts processing requirements. Besides solve the aboveproblem effectively, this paper put forward a new method for layout design based on RE,also improve the RE application in VCMS, provides a clear VCMS resources defined, toprovide reference for the follow-up studies of VCMS work, make the whole optimization ofVCMS more feasible.In view of the complexity of this problem, this article attempts to study it in threestages. The first stage is the analysis of resources equipment processing capacity and theprocess of parts processing requirements. With a new FGS clustering algorithm theequipment processing capacity and parts processing requirements into a set of resourcefactors, unique and common processing ability between the devices and parts processingrequirements are described clearer. The second stage of the research is the resource elementbased weighted distributed layout design problems. on the basis of the first stage’s RE method, used it to describe the equipment processing capacity when considering the weightsbetween RE and make more relevant RE adjacent, using genetic algorithm to constructweighted distributed layout based on resource elements, minimizing the total weightedminimum distance between RE to minimize material handling costs. The third stage is thestudy of construct RE based virtual cell manufacturing system on the designed weighteddistributed layout, puts forward the model to make the equipment, parts and group andassign to the generated virtual cells at the same time, prove the effectiveness of the proposedmodel through a numerical example.To test the research method in the enterprise actual application, this article carried on athorough investigation and research of the AEF company, analyzes its current productionmanagement present situation and existing problems in detail, and application the proposedmethod in the process of parts machining processing, put forward the correspondingweighted distributed layout design method and the method of building virtual cell,compares the effect of the improved, the result shows the feasibility and validity of researchmethod in this paper.