Partitioning of A Manufacturing System into Machine Cells-A Practical Application

Abstract

This article focuses on partitioning a manufacturing system into machine cells. The benefit of such a conversion is improving manufacturing efficiency by eliminating waste in terms of material handling and time as well as increasing production capacity of the manufacturing system. Rank order clustering (ROC) algorithm is used in this study for the conversion. It is easy to understand and its application in obtaining machine cells with a cellular layout is straightforward. ROC algorithm requires a part-machine incidence matrix. The matrix is rearranged until multiple part families and corresponding machine cells are obtained. MS Excel and MATLAB are used in the application. The study converts 44 machine manufacturing system into seven machine cells and brings important performance improvement.