A Cellular Manufacturing Approach to the Composite Manufacturing

摘要

A major obstacle in the way of market growth of composite products is their relatively high production cost. This problem is intensified, especially nowadays, when manufacturers are striving to retain their market demand and regain competitive advantage by satisfying their customers through increasing product variety. Higher variety in general slows down the production rate and increases the production cost. Cellular manufacturing is a way to gain higher product variety while maintaining the volume and reducing the cost. So far, there has not been considerable attention paid to the application of cellular manufacturing to composite manufacturing. A major reason of that would be the relatively low production volume of the composite products. With increase in production volume of some composite products and their popularity in various areas such as automotive industry, the opportunity to adopt cellular manufacturing approach in composite manufacturing is appealing. This can reduce the cost of medium variety/medium or high volume of composite products in such industries as automotive and some other consumer market products. Composite manufacturing systems, however, are different from other manufacturing systems due to their particular methods of manufacturing. This paper studies the properties of composite products in a cellular manufacturing environment and deals with the characteristics of composite products in a manufacturing cell. A new way for CF, which is appropriate for composite manufacturing, will also be introduced.