The Foundation of Cellular Manufacturing
Cellular Manufacturing is a method of producing similar products using cells, or groups of team members, workstations, or equipment, to facilitate operations by eliminating setup and unneeded costs between operations.
Cells might be designed for a specific process, part, or a complete product. They are favorable for single-piece and one-touch production methods and in the office or the factory. Because of increased speed and the minimal handling of materials, cells can result in great cost and time savings and reduced inventory.
Cellular design sometimes makes use of group technology, which studies a large number of components and separates them into groups with similar characteristics.
They also uses families-of-parts processing, which groups components by shape and size to be manufactured by the same people, tools, and machines with little change to process or setup. Irrespective of the design of cell (straight line, u-shape, or other), the equipment in the cell are placed very near one another to save space and time.
In cellular design, the handling of materials can be by hand, conveyor, or robot. A cell supervisory computer must used to control movement between equipment pieces and the conveyor when robots or conveyors are used.
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Meaning of a Cell
A cell refers to a combination of people, equipment, and workstations organized in the order of process flow, to manufacture all or part of a production unit.
The features of a cell include the following:
- It has one-piece, or very small lot, flow.
- It is often used for a family of products.
- It has equipment that is right-sized and very specific for this cell.
- Is usually arranged in a C or U shape so the incoming raw materials and outgoing finished goods are easily monitored.
- Have cross-trained people for flexibility.
Objectives of cellular manufacturing
The following are some core objectives of cellular manufacturing:
- To reduce manufacturing lead times. This can be achieved by reducing setup, work part handling, waiting times, and batch sizes.
- To reduce Work in Process (WIP) inventory. Smaller batch sizes and shorter lead times reduces work-in-process.
- For improvement of quality. This is accomplished by allowing each cell to specialize in making a smaller number of different parts thereby reducing process variability.
- To simplify production scheduling. The system simply schedules the parts, rather than scheduling parts through a sequence of machines in a process-type shop layout,
- To reduce setup times. Accomplished by using group tooling (cutting tools, jigs, and fixtures) that have been designed to process the part family rather than part tooling, which is designed for an individual part. This reduces the number of individual tools required as well as the time to change tooling between parts.
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About the Author
Adebayo is a thought leader in continuous process improvement and manufacturing excellence. He is a Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt (CSSMBB) Professional and Management Systems Lead Auditor (ISO 9001, 45001, ISO 22000/FSSC 22000 etc.) with strong experience leading various continuous improvement initiative in top manufacturing organizations.
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