GROUP TECHNOLOGY AND

CELLULAR MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

Muhammad Ridwan Andi Purnomo, ST, MSc, PhD

Department of Industrial Engineering

Faculty of Industrial Technology
Universitas Islam Indonesia
2016

Introduction
Batch manufacturing is dominant manufacturing activity in the world.
Problem: high level of product variety and small manufacturing lot
size.
High level product variety leads to high investment in equipment, high
tooling cost, complex scheduling and activity management.
To survive in the market, it is need to improve the batch size.
The decision at shop floor design significantly affect manufacturing
cost, quality and delivery lead time.
One of the solution Group Technology and cellular manufacturing
system.

What is Group Technology?

GT is a philosophy that implies the notion of recognising and
exploiting similarities in three different ways (Hyer and Wemmerlov,
1985):
By performing like activities together.
By standardising similar activities.
By efficiently storing and retrieving information about recurring
problems.
A large manufacturing system to produce a set of parts can be
decomposed into smaller subsystem of part families based on
similarities in design attributes and manufacturing features.

Design attributes & manufacturing features

Typical design attributes include part configuration (round or
prismatic), dimension, surface integrity, material type, raw material
state (such as casting, forging, bar stock).
Manufacturing features include operation (turning, drilling and
milling) and their sequence, batch size, machine and cutting tool,
processing time and so forth.
Grouping method: visual Inspection, coding and Opitz classification
method.

Visual inspection method

Arranging a set of parts into groups (known as part families) by visual
inspecting the physical characteristic of the parts or their picture.

Coding method
Process of assigning symbol to the parts. The symbols represent
design attributes of parts, manufacturing features of parts, or both.
There are 3 kind of coding method:
Monocode or hierarchical method.
Polycode method
Mixed code method.

Monocode or hierarchical method

A digit depends on previous digit must be interpreted based on
previous digit.

XXX3 = cant be interpreted, but 3233 is interpreted as electrical part

with the function is receiving.

Polycode method
Each digit in a code can be interpreted independently.

XXXX2211XXXX can be interpreted as a part with dimension 22.11 .

Mixed code
Combination of monocode and polycode. One of the method is Opitz
method.

Basic structure of Opitz method

Impact to the layout

Initial layout (ex: process layout):

Impact to the layout

GT layout (each machine type can be in any stage):

Cellular manufacturing system

If machines to manufacture a part family can be grouped, then a part
from that family doesnt need to go to other machines group
cellular manufacturing.
The process flow in a cell will be slightly complicated (leadtime is
slightly long) and the manufacturing system can produce several
product families (high variety of product).

Volume versus variety

Methods to design manufacturing cell

Methods used to design manufacturing cell:
Heuristic method: Production Flow Analysis (PFA) & Rank Order
Clustering (ROC)
Optimum method: mathematical modelling.
Artificial Intelligent used for very complicated system: Neural
Network and Genetic Algorithm approach.

Production Flow Analysis (PFA)

Example:
Lets consider 5 parts (n) and 6 machines (m):
n
= {101, 102, 103, 104, 105}
m = {Drill1, Drill2, Mill1, Mill2, Vbore1, Vbore2}
= {D1, D2, M1, M2, V1, V2}

Production Flow Analysis (PFA)

Use intuition to cluster parts-machines relation data above !

Production Flow Analysis (PFA)

Result after intuition-based optimisation:

Rank Order Clustering

This method automates the cluster study by computing

Binary weights from a machine part matrix
It orders parts and machine cells automatically by
structuring and computing the matrix with binary weights
It implies a computer algorithm for solving the clustering
problem
It may not solve if machines are needed by more than one
family forces intelligence in application and hand scanning
after several ordering iterations

Rank Order Clustering

The steps:

1. For each row of the machine/part matrix (M/P/M) read the

pattern of cell entries as a binary word. Rank the rows by
decreasing binary value. Equal values stay in same order.
2. Ask if newly ranked rows in the matrix are the same as
previous order? Yes (STOP) No (continue)
3. Re-form the M/P/M with rows in new descending order.
Now rank the columns by decreasing binary word weight.
Columns of equal weight are left where they are
4. Are current column weights the same as current column
order? Yes (STOP), No (continue)
5. Re-form the matrix column order per rank order (highest to
left) and return to #1.

Rank Order Clustering

Example:

Part Number

Machine ID

A
1

1
1

D
E

1
1

Rank Order Clustering

Step 1:
Part Numbers

B. Wt:

25

24

23

22

21

20

Machine ID

B
C

1
1

Step 2: Must Reorder!

1
1

D. Equiv

Rank

23+21 = 10

24+23 = 24

25+22=36

24+23+21
= 26

25+22+20=
37

Rank Order Clustering

Step 3:
Part Number

Machine ID

B. WT.

24

23

22

21

20

D. Equiv

24+23
= 24

22+21=
6

22+21+
20=7

24+23=
24

22+20=
5

24=16

Rank

Step 4: Must Reorder

Rank Order Clustering

Back to Step 1
Part Number
B Wt:
E

Machine ID

25

24

23

22

21

20

Order stays the same: STOP!

D. Eqv

Rank

25+24+
23=56

25+24=
48

22+21+
20 = 7

22+21=6

22+20=5

Thank You !