An Integrated Simulation and Virtual Cellular Manufacturing System Concept Approach for Maintenance Policy Selection

The main purpose of this study is to present a new hybrid approach to select the appropriate maintenance policy (NET) of machines utilizing analytic network process (ANP), computer simulation, and the concept of virtual cellular manufacturing system (VCMS). Since conventional methods select only one NET policy for all machines or production lines, the performance of machines that do not conform to the selected policy is reduced. In the proposed method, the information of the functional parameters of the machines is extracted by means of computer simulation and there is no need for expert opinion. Next, the appropriate net policy for each machine is selected using the ANP method. To reduce the diversity and complexity of NET applications, machines are grouped using the concept of virtual cellular manufacturing system based on the similarity of NET policies. A NET program is prepared for each group of machines. The proposed approach is used in a production unit with three widely used NET policies, and its efficiency was proved by comparing the results with conventional methods.

An Integrated Approach for the Operational Design of a Cellular Manufacturing System

Shorter product life cycles, unpredictable demand patterns and the ever-shrinking time to market, have been constantly keeping the manufacturing firms under a lot of pressure. To face these challenges the manufacturing organizations have been shifting to Cellular Manufacturing (CM) due to its benefits of reducing manufacturing costs, increasing flexibility and delivering orders on time. Despite having several benefits, designing a Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS) for a real-life application is a tough ask. The main challenge is the part-machine grouping in cells. It becomes even more challenging when the group scheduling (GS) problem is handled alongside the part-machine clustering. To take up this challenge, an integrated model is developed during this research which handles the machine-part grouping and the GS problems, simultaneously. To optimize the multiple objectives of maximizing Grouping Efficacy (GE) and minimizing Makespan (Cmax), concurrently, a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) based approach is developed. The proposed technique is validated through the famous benchmark problems, unlike the several approaches already available in literature. The computational results have shown that the integrated approach, presented in this paper, is more effective as compared to a sequential technique. Also, its accuracy remains intact even if it is applied to large sized problems.