Some Aspects of Designing a Dynamic Cellular Manufacturing System for Deterministic and Stochastic Production Requirements

Short production life cycles, high production variety, unpredictable demand, and short delivery times have led to the development of conditions in which manufacturing systems operate under a dynamic and uncertain environment. Most of the current cellular manufacturing (CM) design methods have been developed for static production and deterministic demand states. Existing design methods employ simplifying assumptions, which often deteriorate the validity of the models used for obtaining solutions. Two simplifying assumptions used in existing design methods are: product mix and demand do not change over the planning horizon, and each operation can be performed by only one machine type. Because of the increasing variety of consumer goods and decreasing product life cycles, most manufacturing organizations encounter dynamic (i.e., fluctuations in product mix and demand) and stochastic (i.e., unknown product mix/or demand in each period) production requirements. This paper reviews the various aspects of design of cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) for dynamic and stochastic production requirements and provides directions for future research.