An integrated design method for machine and assembly cell formation

The object of this study is to propose an integrated design method for machine-part grouping problem and part-assembly grouping problem in cellular manufacturing system design using mathematical programming procedure. There is a great deal of methods that have been proposed for the machine-part grouping problem in cellular manufacturing system. But few researches consider the design for machine cell and assembly cell simultaneously. The product considered in this study is assumed to be assembled with several parts which are manufactured through machining processes. It is necessary to convey the parts from machine cell to assembly cell smoothly. Therefore we consider machine cell and assembly cell formation concurrently. Relation of the assembly products and parts are shown by assembly-part incident matrix same as machine-part incident matrix. Using these two incident matrices, machines and assembly products also can be shown by a matrix. Grouping efficacy is a good grouping index for machine-part incident matrix which consists of 0 and 1 elements. We propose a new grouping efficacy for machine-part-assembly incident matrix, because the matrix has the element value larger than 1. Last we show several numerical examples using the proposed method and evaluate the results by the proposed grouping efficacy.