Planning, Design, and Analysis of Cellular Manufacturing Systems

Book excerpt: Leading researchers in the field of cellular manufacturing systems from academia and industry have contributed to this volume. The book aims to report the latest developments and address the central issues in the design and implementation of cellular manufacturing systems. Cellular Manufacturing (CM) is one of the major concepts used in the design of flexible manufacturing systems. CM, also known as group production or family programming, can be described as a manufacturing technique that produces families of parts within a single line or cell of machines. The first part of the book describes various techniques for design and modeling of cellular manufacturing systems. The second part is concerned with performance measure and analysis, followed by a section which presents the applications of artifical intelligence and computer tools in cellular manufacturing systems.