Title: The reconfiguration issue of stochastic facility layout design in cellular manufacturing systems

Authors: Shahram Ariafar; Napsiah Ismail; Sai Hong Tang; Mohd Khairol Anuar Mohd Ariffin; Zahra Firoozi

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, 43400, Selangor, Malaysia; Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran. ' Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, 43400, Selangor, Malaysia. ' Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, 43400, Selangor, Malaysia. ' Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, 43400, Selangor, Malaysia. ' Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM Serdang, 43400, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: Facility layout is one of the important stages in the design of cellular manufacturing systems. It concerns with the arrangement of facilities within the machine cells and the machine cells in the shop floor in such a way that provides an efficient layout. Globalisation and consequences of its high competition which have challenged the manufacturers by providing uncertain situations in the manufacturing environments, degrades the performance of the manufacturing systems. In this study, the effects of uncertainty in demand of products on the layout of facilities in a cellular manufacturing system have been investigated. For this purpose, a stochastic facility layout model has been proposed that minimises the total material handling cost (both inter-cell and intra-cell), and considers that demand has a normal distribution function. The model has been made more practical by considering the transfer batch size of products and operation sequence of parts. To validate the model, several cases have been demonstrated, and solved by two methods; an optimisation software named Lingo 12.0, and an enumeration method which has been developed in C/C++. The results show that fluctuation in demand scenario (service level) can lead to change in the layout of facilities. In other words, the results show the sensitivity of layout problems in cellular manufacturing systems to variation in demand.

Keywords: facility layout; cellular manufacturing; manufacturing cells; stochastic demand; normal distribution; service level; Lingo; enumeration; operations management; demand uncertainty; layout design; layout modelling; reconfiguration; materials handling cost.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2012.045658

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2012 Vol.11 No.3, pp.255 - 266

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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