Material handling in a flexible manufacturing system processing part families
WSC '91 Proceedings of the 23rd conference on Winter simulation
Modeling manufacturing systems using MANUPLAN and SIMSTARTER &m dash; tutorial (tutorial session)
WSC' 90 Proceedings of the 22nd conference on Winter simulation
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company (MDHC), designer and manufacturer of military and commercial helicopters, is currently instituting a major modernization program. A resource consolidation project has been initiated as part of this modernization program. One of the primary goals of this project is to consolidate the production resources into a cellular manufacturing environment resulting in a projected reduction in the current manufacturing space requirements by up to 50%. Other goals of the consolidation project include:Reduction in part/lot throughput time.Reduction in work-in-process inventory levels.Reduction in wait-move-queue times.Increase in machine tool utilization.Four key areas are basic to the successful design and implementation of a cellular manufacturing environment:Cell definition.Cell planning.Cell configuration.Cell management.An approach to this project has been formulated that will result in the initial implementation of one prototype manufacturing cell supported by a shared manufacturing resource zone. The following manufacturing technologies have been used to address the above noted areas:Group technology analysis.Simulation modeling.Process flow analysis.Artificial Intelligence.The performance of this cellular manufacturing configuration will be monitored through a data collection system and the results used as the basis for the design and implementation of the remaining manufacturing cells.