Systematic approach to cellular manufacturing systems design

A systematic approach of designing Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMSs) in three steps is presented in this paper. The first step is the implementation of group technology techniques which provides tools to group similar parts into a family and corresponding machines into a manufacturing cell. The second step is the scheduling of each family parts which generates an efficient method of arranging the facilities of each cell. The next step is developing a flexible system and integrating the production planning and control processes. This can be achieved by using KANBAN and decoupler between manufacturing processes.