Application of Cellular Manufacturing and Simulation Approaches for Performance Improvement in an Aerospace Company's Manufacturing Activities

Abstract

This paper presents performance improvement studies performed in manufacturing activities of an aerospace company. Cellular Manufacturing (CM) and simulation approaches are used to improve performance in the factory of the company. In the application of CM, reorganization of machines in the machining section as manufacturing cells is performed by using Rank Order Clustering (ROC) algorithm and Hollier method. The performance improvement provided by CM application is measured in terms of the total material handling distances travelled by the parts. On the other hand, a simulation model in SIMAN is developed for panel production section of the factory. Based on the performance outputs of the simulation model, various recommendations are proposed in the operation rules and numbers of resources in the panel production section. The results show that both approaches provide considerable performance improvement in the manufacturing activities of the factory.