An industrial application of network-flow models in cellular manufacturing planning

A network flow methodology is developed for grouping machines into cells and forming part families in cellular manufacturing. A three-phase methodology allows the study of important considerations related to number of cells, number of machines in each cell, and part family size. The first phase uses a functional relationship between machines based on the operation sequences of the parts to be manufactured to provide the parameters needed for a network representation of the problem. The second phase performs a network partitioning procedure to group machines into cells. The third phase identifies the part families through a network approach that allows the identification of a feasible assignment of parts to machine cells satisfying a restriction on part family size. An industrial application of the proposed methodology is presented.