Critical activities in a successful cellular manufacturingimplementation

摘要

A manufacturing cell consists of a cluster of functionallydissimilar machines or processes which are placed in close proximity toone another and are dedicated to the manufacture of a set of partfamilies. Parts are grouped into part families depending on thesimilarity in parts' geometry, manufacturing processes required, orboth. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the data collected ina survey of US firms that operate manufacturing cells. The objective wasto identify several activities as variables describing the majorimplementation process. The ultimate goal was to determine whichactivities have greatest impacts on the degree of success. Best subsetsof the variables (the ones which have the most impact on CM success)were generated using exploratory descriptive (rather than predictive)regression models. The results may provide a preliminary identificationof `best practices' for CM implementation