| In this study, a new procedure for forming manufacturing cells is presented. The considerations for this procedure are the machine capacity, the minimum utilization levels for dedicated lines, and the investment costs.;Specific objectives of this study are: (1) To develop a "Dedicated line" procedure to determine when a line should be dedicated to a single part, (2) To develop various clustering procedure to solve the cell formation problem with machine and line capacity restrictions, (3) To identify what algorithmic approach offers the best configuration and at the same time the lowest investment cost.;The user of this system provides information on production demand, processing times, machine investment costs, machine depreciation years, minimum dedication levels utilization, upper number of machines available per cell, total number of machines per type for the manufacturing cells, and machine hours available per year. The procedure responds with a final configuration formed by three elements: the Dedicated Cells, the Manufacturing Cells and the Remainder Cell.;In each configuration, several performance measures were presented: the total number of required machines, the average cell utilization, and the total investment cost. A computer-based procedure is developed in order to show how the methodology for solving the cell formation problem can be applied. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
