In recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of cell formation methods. The surge of interest in the area has been fueled by the substantial industry interest in implementing cellular manufacturing (CM) system to reduce set-up times, material handling and lead times. In this paper, a new approach for cell formation has been presented with main focus on flexibility in regrouping of operations. The procedure includes three phases. In phase 1, primary cells are formed by dividing operations into three ranges (high, medium and low). The frequency of flow occurring between the operations has been taken as a measure for dividing flows into three ranges. Phase 2, involves decomposition of individual primary cells into sub-cells by employing phase 1 again on individual primary cells until further division into sub-cells becomes impossible. Phase 3, involves shifting of operations based upon machine utilization in cells. The formulation forms a formal framework for further research for the development of multi-criteria models by incorporating various flexibilities.
flexibility, intercell flow, intracell flow, material handling, operations regrouping, utilization, virtual manufacturing cells
