DESIGN CONCEPT AND INFORMATION PROCESSING FOR FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN OF FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS.

This paper presents the design concept and the fundamental design procedure for the flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). The method is proposed to obtain the appropriate cellular structure of the FMS based on the Group Technology (GT) so as to attain the high productivity and flexibility. A software system is developed to realize the proposed method in human-computer interaction, which is entitled CAFPLAN-I (Computer Aided Factory PLANning system - I). This system enables one to systematically find the satisfactory solution taking account of the number of cells, cell sizes, alternative machine tools, workload balance among machines and machine utilization by the efficient use of the designer's know-how.