FACILITY LAYOUT USING LAYOUT MODULES

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor

of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Heng Huang, M.S.

*****

The Ohio State University

2003

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Professor Shahrukh A. Irani, Advisor

Professor Clark A. Mount-Campbell Advisor

Professor Tito Homem-de-Mello Industrial and Systems Engineering

Graduate Program
 ABSTRACT

The Functional, Flowline and Cellular Layouts are traditional facility layouts that

have been discussed in the literature and implemented in industry. Selection of an

appropriate layout for a multi-product facility poses a major challenge since the best

decomposition of its material flow network is usually achieved by a hybrid layout that

must combine the flow and machine grouping attributes of the three traditional layouts.

Unfortunately, the Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) design process does not describe

specific methods for product mix segmentation and department planning for design of

jobshop layouts. It lacks a systematic method for varying the manufacturing focus of the

different planning departments (or activities) into which the jobshop can be decomposed.

We enhance the SLP process by integrating Production Flow Analysis (PFA) into SLP.

Adoption of algorithms and principles of PFA in the process of SLP can eliminate the

two limitations of SLP: (a) incapability of using product routings, instead of the From-To

chart, as input data, and (b) incapability of generating layouts that are a hybrid

combination of Functional and Cellular layouts.

A review of the literature shows that a fundamental requirement for the design of

modern facility layouts is the distribution of identical machines at multiple locations in

the facility. Our research shows that the material flow network in any facility layout can

be decomposed into a network of layout modules, with each module representing a

ii
portion of the entire facility. A layout module is defined as a group of machines

connected by a material flow network that exhibits a flow pattern characteristic of a

specific type of layout, such as the Flowline, Cellular or Functional Layout. The concept

of layout modules extends current thinking on input data requirements and methods for

facility layout, and supports the need for a new generation of facility layouts beyond the

three traditional layouts that continue to be studied and implemented in industry. We

propose a group technology based heuristic approach as an alternative method for

generation of layout modules and design of modular layouts, based on a new similarity

measure for comparison of operation sequences.

iii
Dedicated to Huili Zhang, my dearest wife

iv
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Professor Shahrukh A. Irani, my

advisor and mentor, for his excellent guidance and counseling which made this

dissertation possible, and for his financial support for my graduate study at The Ohio

State University.

I am grateful to Professor Clark A. Mount-Campbell and Professor Tito Homem-

de-Mello for their patience in correcting my scientific errors and their useful comments

on my research.

I would like to thank the Department of Industrial, Welding and Systems

Engineering for providing comfortable learning and research environment.

I also wish to thank my family, especially my wife, for their encouragement,

enthusiasm and emotional support.

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

v
 VITA

1994 B.S. Instrument and Its Automation, Tianjin University, China

1997 M.S. Systems Engineering, Tianjin University, China

1997 present Graduate Research Associate, The Ohio State University

Publication

1. Huang, H. and Irani, S.A. (2003). An enhanced systematic layout planning process
for high-variety low-volume (HVLV) manufacturing facilities. To appear in The 17th
International Conference on Production Research, Blacksburg, VA, August 3-7.

2. Huang, H. and Irani, S.A. (1999). Design of facility layouts using layout modules: A
numerical clustering approach. Proceedings of the 8th Industrial Engineering
Research Conference, Phoenix, AZ, May 23-26.

3. Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (2000). Custom design of facility layouts for multi-product
facilities using layout modules. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation,
16(3), 259-267.

4. Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (2000). A new approach for department planning to
minimize inter-departmental material handling traffic in a custom manufacturing
facility. Proceedings of the 6th International Colloquium on Material Handling
Research, York, PA, June 11-14.

5. Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (2000). A pattern recognition approach for facility
compaction and selection of flexible automation. Proceedings of the North American
Manufacturing Research Conference, Lexington, KY, May 24-26.

6. Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (2000). Facility layout using layout modules. Proceedings
of the Y2K NSF Design and Manufacturing Research Conference, Vancouver, BC,
Canada, January 3-6.

7. Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (1998). Layout modules: A novel extension of hybrid
cellular layouts. Proceedings of the 1998 ASME International Mechanical

vi
 Engineering Congress & Exposition and Winter Annual Meeting of the ASME,
Anaheim, CA, November 15-20.

8. Irani, S.A., Huang, H., Zhang, H. and Zhou, J. (2001). Computer methods for
implementation of production flow analysis. In Cellular Manufacturing: A Practical
Approach, Quarterman Lee (Editor), Institute of Industrial Engineers: Norcross, GA.

9. Irani, S.A., Zhang, H., Zhou, J., Huang, H., Tennati, K.U. and Subramanian, S.
(2000). Production flow analysis and simplification toolkit (PFAST). International
Journal of Production Research, 38(8), 1855-1874.

10. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J. and Huang, H. (2003). A pattern recognition approach for
facility compaction by machining function combination using flexible manufacturing
models. To appear in The ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering.

11. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J. and Huang, H. (2001). Design of manufacturing facility layouts
by unification of matrix, string and graph representations of material flow networks.
Proceedings of the 2001 NSF Design, Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation
Research Conference (CD-ROM only), Tampa, FL, January 7-10.

12. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J. and Huang, H. (2000). Facility layout using operation sequences:
History, limitations and alternatives to the from-to chart. Submitted to IIE
Transactions.

13. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J. and Huang, H. (2000). Layout design for custom manufacturing
and assembly facilities using a single flow mapping tool. Newsletter of the Facilities
Planning and Design Division (FAPAD) of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE),
Fall, 1-4.

14. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J. and Huang, H. (2000). Integrated use of operation sequences and
from-to charts for analysis of material flow patterns. Proceedings of the 6th
International Colloquium on Material Handling Research, York, PA, June 11-14.

15. Irani, S.A., Zhou, J., Huang, H. and Udai, T.K. (2000). Enhancements in facility
layout tools using cell formation techniques. Proceedings of the Y2K NSF Design and
Manufacturing Research Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, January 3-6.

Field of Study

Industrial and Systems Engineering

vii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ii
DEDICATION....................................................................................................................iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................v
VITA. ......................................................................................................................vi
LIST OF TABLE ................................................................................................................x
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................xii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................1

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW: FACILITY LAYOUTS ...........................................................6
2.1. Traditional Types of Facility Layouts .......................................................... 6
2.2. Non-Traditional Types of Facility Layouts.................................................. 8
2.3. Trends in Facility Layouts observed in Industry........................................ 15

CHAPTER 3
SYSTEMATIC LAYOUT PLANNING WITH PRODUCTION FLOW
ANALYSIS.........................................................................................................................22
3.1. Department Splitting and Machine Duplication......................................... 22
3.2. History of From-To Chart .......................................................................... 24
3.3. Fundamental Limitations of the From-To Chart ........................................ 27
3.4. Limitations of Some Concepts and Assumptions....................................... 32
3.5. Systematic Layout Planning with Production Flow Analysis .................... 36

viii
CHAPTER 4
MERGER COEFFICIENT A NEW STRING MATCHING METHOD FOR
COMPARISON OF OPERATION SEQUENCES ............................................................46
4.1. Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences............................. 47
4.2. Calculation of Distance/Similarity between Operation Sequences ............ 52
4.3. Typical Distance/Similarity Measures for Comparison of Operation
Sequences ................................................................................................... 54
4.4. Merger Coefficient ..................................................................................... 59
4.5. Cluster Analysis using Merger Coefficient ................................................ 67

CHAPTER 5
DESIGN OF MODULAR LAYOUTS...............................................................................82
5.1. Layout Modules: A New Concept in Facility Layout ................................ 84
5.2. Problem Description for Designing A Modular Layout............................. 87
5.3. A Heuristic Procedure for Generation of Layout Modules ........................ 92
5.4. Comparison of Alternative Layouts ......................................................... 115
5.5. Case Study................................................................................................ 119

CHAPTER 6
DESIGN OF FLEXIBLE MACHINING MODULES USING LAYOUT
MODULES...................................................................................................129
6.1. Facility Compaction by An FMS ............................................................. 130
6.2. Impact of Flexible Machining Modules on Product Throughput Times.. 133
6.3. Feasibility of Multi-Function FMMs ....................................................... 135
6.4. Layout Modules as A Basis for Design of FMMs.................................... 137
6.5. An Illustration of Conceptual Design of FMMs and FMCs..................... 139

BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................147

ix
 LIST OF TABLE

Table Page

3.1 Departments in the Jobshop .........................................................................28

3.2 Operation Sequences and Batch Quantities of Parts produced in the
Jobshop.........................................................................................................29
3.3 From-To Chart for Facility Layout Design for the Jobshop ........................29
4.1 Comparison of Merger Coefficient with other Distance/Similarity
Measures.......................................................................................................66
4.2 Operation Sequences for the Sample of Parts ..............................................73
4.3 Levenshtein Distances for the Sample of Parts ............................................74
4.4 Askin and Zhous Similarity Coefficients for the Sample of Parts..............75
4.5 Merger Coefficients for the Sample of Parts................................................76
4.6 Levenshtein Distance based Similarity Coefficients for the Sample of
Parts ..............................................................................................................77
5.1 Comparison of Flow Complexity for Layout Modules ................................89
5.2 Operation Sequences for the Sample of Parts ..............................................93
5.3 Common Substrings between all Pairs of Operation Sequences..................96
5.4 Unique Common Substrings ........................................................................97
5.5 Merger Coefficients for All Pairs of Dominant Common Substrings
(DCS)............................................................................................................104
5.6 Basic Layout Modules..................................................................................106
5.7 Commonalities between Basic Layout Modules ..........................................107
5.8 Modular Sequences for the Sample of Parts ................................................109
5.9 Adjustment of Layout Modules....................................................................110
5.10 Adjusted Modular Sequences for the Sample of Parts .................................111
5.11 Machine Requirements in Layout Modules and as Residual Machines.......114
5.12 Comparison of the Alternative Layouts on Flow Complexity .....................117
5.13 Comparison of the Alternative Layouts on Flexibility.................................118
x
5.14 Routings of Parts ..........................................................................................119
5.15 Dominant Common Substrings ....................................................................120
5.16 Merger Coefficients for All Pairs of Dominant Common Substrings
(DCS)............................................................................................................121
5.17 Basic Layout Modules..................................................................................124
5.18 Commonalities among Basic Layout Modules ............................................125
5.19 Merger of Basic Layout Modules.................................................................125
5.20 Modular Sequences for the Parts..................................................................126
5.21 Adjusted Modular Sequences for the Parts ..................................................127
6.1 Examples of Facility Compaction by an FMS (Iwata, 1984).......................131
6.4 Unique Common Substring ..........................................................................140
6.2 Routings for a Sample of Parts obtained from a Machining Jobshop ..........141
6.3 Identification of Unique Routings in the Sample of Parts............................142
6.5 Directed Graph Representation of Overall Material Flows in the
Jobshop.........................................................................................................144

xi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 Traditional Types of Facility Layouts ..........................................................7

2.2 Classification of Traditional and Non-Traditional Layouts .........................8
3.1 Functional Layout generated using Tables 3.1 and 3.2 ................................30
3.2 Software Packages for Facility Layout ........................................................31
3.3 The Systematic Layout Planning Design Process (Muther, 1973)...............37
3.4 Algorithms for Production Flow Analysis (Irani et al, 2000) ......................40
3.5 Systematic Layout Planning with Production Flow Analysis ......................42
3.6 Overall Framework of Production Flow Analysis using PFAST.................43
3.7 Detailed Framework of Production Flow Analysis Using PFAST ..............44
3.8 Utilization of Various PFAST Modules for Department Planning ..............45
4.1 Layout Changes corresponding to Editing of an Operation Sequence.........48
4.2 Trace Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences.....................49
4.3 Alignment Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences.............50
4.4 Listing Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences...................51
4.5 Comparison Process for Compliant Indexes ................................................58
4.6 Illustration of Calculating Merger Distance and Interruption Distance .......64
4.7 Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Levenshtein
Distance ........................................................................................................78
4.8 Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Askin and
Zhous Similarity Coefficient.......................................................................79
4.9 Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Merger
Coefficient ....................................................................................................80
4.10 Threshold Trends of the Distance/Similarity Measures ...............................81
5.1 Illustration of Layout Modules.....................................................................87
5.2 Algorithm for Finding Common_Substrings in Two Operation
Sequences .....................................................................................................95
xii
5.3 Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering of Dominant Common
Substrings .....................................................................................................105
5.4 Flow Diagram for the Modular Layout ........................................................112
5.5 Modular Layout for the Sample of Parts ......................................................115
5.6 Functional Layout for the Sample of Parts...................................................116
5.7 Flowline Cellular Layout for the Sample of Parts........................................117
5.8 Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering of Dominant Common
Substrings .....................................................................................................122
5.9 Layout Module M5 after Absorption of Residual Machines .......................126
5.10 Flow Diagram for the Modular Layout ........................................................128
6.1 Five-Axis Machining Center with Tilting Contouring Spindle (Wick,
1987).............................................................................................................132
6.2 Four-Axis Turning Center Combined with a Five-Axis Machining
Head for Nine-Axis Machining (Wick, 1987)..............................................132
6.3 Examples of how Fumes help to eliminate Delay Elements in Product
Throughput Time (Warnecke and Steinhilper, 1983) ..................................134
6.4 Machine Tool Classification System for Design Feasibility of Multi-
Function FMMs (Ito and Shinno, 1982).......................................................136
6.5 Clusters of Similar Common Substrings converted into FMMs, an
FMC and Cell-type Layout Modules............................................................143
6.6 Decomposition of Overall Material Flow Network into Layout
Modules ........................................................................................................143
6.7 Facility Layout for the Jobshop based on Table 6.5.....................................145
6.8 Layout of Pilot Cell that was implemented by the Jobshop .........................145
6.9 Location of Pilot Cell in the Overall Layout of the Jobshop........................146

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Production consists of a sequence of operations that transform materials from a

given to a desired form. The transformation may be done in one or in a combination of

the following ways (Eilon, 1962): (a) transformation by disintegration, having essentially

one ingredient as input and producing several outputs; (b) transformation by integration

or assembly, using several components as input and obtaining essentially one product as

output; (c) transformation by service, where virtually no change in the object under

consideration is perceptible but where certain operations are performed to change one of

the parameters which define the object. No matter what transformations are used in the

factory, there are four major measures for the output (Eilon, 1962): quality, quantity,

time, and price.

A facility layout can have a significant effect on these four measures. Phillips

(1997) described how these measures can be improved by a good facility layout:

1) Quality improvement. Manufacturing cell (single-part or very small batch

flow), product focused facility layouts tend to have high-quality output

when compared with functionally-segregated, large-scale, batch-process-

-1-
 oriented layouts. It usually holds for some portion of products in most

companies engaged in light manufacturing.

2) Accurate quantity and time delivery as requested and scheduled. Focused

business units with cellular manufacturing can facilitate lower cycle time

through the factory, which can improve delivery performance. In a mixed

factory environment, with several business units competing for support

services, there needs to be balance. That balance revolves around the issue

of which functions should be centralized and serve all units and which

should be totally included within each factory business unit or cell.

3) Price reduction. To keep the product prices low, we need to consistently

minimize overhead and factory costs. Two major elements of the direct and

indirect costs equation are material handling and facility layout, where the

former can be improved by better location of equipment, reduced handling

distances, and better co-ordination of the entire handling activity.

Facility layout design determines how to arrange, locate and distribute the

equipment and support services in a manufacturing facility to achieve minimization of

overall production time, maximization of operational and arrangement flexibility,

maximization of turnover of work-in-process and maximization of factory output in

conformance with production schedules. Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) (Muther,

1973) is an organized way to conduct layout design. SLP consists of a framework of

phases through which each layout design project passes, a pattern of step-by-step

-2-
procedures for layout planners to perform, and a set of conventions for identifying and

evaluating various activities and alternatives involved in any layout design procedure.

The Functional, Flowline and Cellular Layouts are traditional facility layouts that

have been discussed in the literature and implemented in industry. Selection of an

appropriate layout for a multi-product facility poses a major challenge since the best

decomposition of its material flow network is usually achieved by a hybrid layout that

must combine the flow and machine grouping attributes of the three traditional layouts.

Unfortunately, the Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) design process does not describe

specific methods for product mix segmentation and department planning for design of

jobshop layouts. It lacks a systematic method for varying the manufacturing focus of the

different planning departments (or activities) into which the jobshop can be decomposed.

We enhance the SLP process by integrating Production Flow Analysis (PFA) into SLP.

Adoption of algorithms and principles of PFA in the process of SLP can eliminate the

two limitations of SLP: (a) incapability of using product routings, instead of the From-To

chart, as input data, and (b) incapability of generating layouts that are a hybrid

combination of Functional and Cellular layouts.

A review of the literature shows that a fundamental requirement for the design of

modern facility layouts is the distribution of identical machines at multiple locations in

the facility. Our research shows that the material flow network in any facility layout can

be decomposed into a network of layout modules, with each module representing a

portion of the entire facility. A layout module is defined as a group of machines

connected by a material flow network that exhibits a flow pattern characteristic of a

-3-
specific type of layout, such as the Flowline, Cellular or Functional Layout. The concept

of layout modules extends current thinking on input data requirements and methods for

facility layout, and supports the need for a new generation of facility layouts beyond the

three traditional layouts that continue to be studied and implemented in industry. We

propose a group technology based heuristic approach as an alternative method for

generation of layout modules and design of modular layouts, based on a new similarity

measure for comparison of operation sequences.

Our research extends current thinking on input data requirements and methods for

facility layout. In addition, it supports the need for a new generation of facility layouts

beyond the three traditional layouts that continue to be studied and implemented in

industry. The concepts and methods discussed in this dissertation extend the state-of-the-

art in the theory and practice of facility layout techniques as follows:

The department in a facility is allowed to contain a combination of

multiple compatible processes, instead of a single process. Similarly, the

formation of a partial cell is allowed since the threshold values of

operation sequence similarity for grouping dissimilar products into

families are subjective and vary with each sample of product routings

specific to a particular jobshop.

Facility planners are allowed to take a logical approach to duplicating

machines of the same function at multiple locations in a facility based on

their occurrence in different combinations of operations required for

different families of routings.

-4-
 More than one type of layout can be used to arrange the different

machines and resources in a facility.

This dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 reviews the contemporary

literature on design of facility layouts, including both traditional and non-traditional

layouts, and discusses the trends in facility layout observed in industry. Chapter 3 points

out the limitations of the SLP process and presents an enhanced SLP process with

integration of PFA into SLP. Chapter 4 introduces a new similarity measure for

comparison of operation sequences, and compares it with other distance/similarity

measures. In chapter 5, the concept of layout modules and flow pattern characteristic of

each module are introduced. A group technology based heuristic approach is proposed for

the problem of designing modular layouts. A case study is studied using data from a local

sheet metal fabrication jobshop. Chapter 6 presents an application of concept of layout

modules to design of flexible machining modules.

-5-
 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW: FACILITY LAYOUTS

2.1. Traditional Types of Facility Layouts

Traditionally, three types of layout are considered appropriate for a manufacturing

facility Flowline (Product), Cellular (Group) and Functional (Process) as shown in

Figure 2.1. In a Functional Layout, machines with identical manufacturing capabilities

are grouped into a single department. The different process-specialized departments,

such as Turning, Grinding, Milling, Broaching and Heat Treatment, are located relative to

each other in order to increase machine utilization and production flexibility. In contrast,

in a Cellular Layout, each department in the Functional Layout could be split and the

machines in it allocated among two or more cells. Each cell is a group of machines

from different process departments co-located in a dedicated section of the shopfloor.

However, each cell is capable of producing some subset (also referred to as a part family)

of the complete product mix produced in the facility. In essence, a Functional Layout has

a process focus whereas a Cellular Layout has a part family focus. The Flowline Layout

combines the properties of the Functional and Cellular Layouts. All of the machines and

support services required to make a single part (or a family of variants of a product) are

-6-
located in a single department (Wolstenholme et al, 1980). The production capacity of

each type of equipment in a Flowline Layout is balanced against that of the others as

nearly as practicable, by using as many units of each type as are required to obtain the

desired capacity to satisfy demand volumes (Ireson, 1952).

Figure 2.1: Traditional Types of Facility Layouts

-7-
2.2. Non-Traditional Types of Facility Layouts

In an extension to the traditional layouts, many non-traditional layouts have been

introduced. Figure 2.2 presents a classification of traditional and non-traditional facility

layouts using a product vs. process focus as the basis for grouping and placement of

machines in a manufacturing facility layout. The prevailing new concepts that appeared

in recent literature on facility layout design include Agile, Flexible, Fractal, Holonic,

Hybrid Cellular, Modular, Multi-Channel Manufacturing, and Responsibility Networks

layouts. An overview on these layouts is given below.

Distributed (or Flexible or Robust) Layouts

Cellular Layout based on Part Families
Flowline Layout for each Product

Holonic and Fractal Layouts

Hybrid (Cellular) Layouts
Multi-Product Flowlines

Functional Layout
Modular Layouts
Fractal Layouts

Virtual Cells

--------------

Increasing product focus Increasing process focus Next Generation Facility Layouts

Figure 2.2: Classification of Traditional and Non-Traditional Layouts

-8-
 Agile Manufacturing Layouts (Kochhar and Heragu, 1999; Montreuil, 2000):

Intense global competition, rapid technological change and a growing responsiveness of

the manufacturing and service industries to a cost and quality conscious customer have

changed the dynamics of manufacturing systems planning. The new paradigm for facility

design must recognize that the character of design has to be essentially dynamic. Product

mix and demand are constantly in a state of flux. A manufacturing facility needs to be

agile and responsive to the frequent changes in product mix and demand. In the adaptive

manufacturing environment, the robustness of any design over a long planning horizon is

questionable and changes to the layout design must be made frequently. Simultaneously,

changes in the design of processing and material handling equipment are also inevitable.

An agile facility must be able to adapt to a new set of conditions in the next planning

period. It is important for the infrastructure in such a system to facilitate agility. For

example, a facility designed with embedded perpendicular tracks along the aisles helps

decrease the cost of moving equipment and facilitates agility during relayout. While

designing machine cells, it is necessary to take into consideration the relocation factor.

This will reduce the cost of reorganization. One can visualize a scenario where all the

interface devices for control systems are interchangeable and open. In such a case, plug

and play features may be implemented in the machine tools. This may require a

redesign of the machine tools, material handling equipment, interface devices and other

support functions. Support services such as compressed air, water or coolant lines may

-9-
have to be suitably designed to support this layout concept. The objective of agile facility

design is to permit a high degree of adaptability and responsiveness for the entire system,

along with the flexibility that is inherent in many current day facilities.

Flexible Plant Layouts (Benjaafar and Sheikhzadeh, 2000): Flexible layouts are

those that can effectively cope with variations in product demand and product mix. Their

effectiveness is measured by expected material handling cost over the various possible

demand scenarios. A flexible layout is, thus, one that would maintain low material

handling costs despite fluctuations in the product demand levels and fluctuations in the

resulting material handling flows. The approach for design of flexible layouts (1)

explicitly captures the stochastic nature of product demands and the resulting material

flows between different processing departments, (2) allows for the possibility of multiple

processing departments of the same type to exist in the same facility, and (3) lets material

flows between pairs of individual departments be determined simultaneously with the

layout, as a function of the demand scenarios. This approach to layout design departs

from conventional solution methods for both the static and stochastic layout problems in

several ways. Most important is the fact that the authors account for the possibility of

having multiple departments of the same type in the same facility. This is significant

since duplicating departments or disaggregating existing ones (e.g. not placing all

machines of a given type in the same location) is shown to be an effective mechanism for

enhancing layout flexibility. By strategically locating duplicate departments in different

areas of the plant floor, a facility can hedge against future fluctuations in job flow

patterns and volumes. It has been shown that having alternative processing departments

- 10 -
to which jobs can be routed can reduce and simplify material handling requirements in a

jobshop even in the absence of volume and/or mix variability.

Fractal Layout (Askin et al, 1996; Venkatadri et al, 1997): Fractal layout is an

extension of cellular layout. In fractal layout the manufacturing facility is divided into

multiple, nearly identical machine cells. Each cell contains a heterogeneous mix of

machines. A combination of machine types forming a cell is called a fractal. Arriving

jobs are assigned to the fractal with the largest available resource capability relative to the

job requirements. Based on typical routings and equipment compatibility, more than one

type of fractal may be defined. Fractals are replicated as needed to determine capacity of

the manufacturing facility. Fractal layout differs from cellular layout in that there is no

specialization to produce certain parts or family of parts in a fractal. Moreover, fractals

require a wider range of operation capabilities due to the unpredictable and time-varying

part mix and operation requirement.

Holonic layout (Askin et al, 1996; Askin et al, 1999): Holonic layouts appear as

random arrangement of machines. No specific cell boundaries exist; instead each

machine acts as an autonomous entity capable of broadcasting its availability and bidding

its services. The multiple machines of a type are spread throughout the facility. The intent

is that, for any possible part routing that may occur, such a job can be accommodated

with a routing of nearly adjacent machines somewhere in the facility. Routes not only can

be based on machine workloads and bids at the time of release, but can also be

dynamically updated for each successive operation during production. Machines can be

located either at random or strategically to ensure efficient paths for all possible routings.

- 11 -
 Hybrid Cellular Layouts (Irani and Huang, 1998): A significant portion of the

literature compares the performance of Functional vs. Cellular Layouts. However, if the

design of cells requires significant duplication of identical machines in two or more cells,

it may be advisable to design a layout with properties that are intermediate between the

Functional and Cellular Layouts. This could be done primarily by (a) varying the extent

of machine duplication in the layout and (b) eliminating the requirement that a machine

group must process a complete family of parts. Examples of these intermediate layouts

are Cascading Cells, Remainder Cells, Hybrid Flowshops, Virtual Cells, Overlapping

Cells and Layout Modules (or Partial Cells). The primary design strategy for generating

these layouts is to form the cells. However, during the placement and floor-planning

phase, maximum closeness between all pairs of identical machines in different cells is

sought in order to retain each group of identical machines in a process department, as in a

Functional Layout. Figure 1 presents a classification of traditional and non-traditional

facility layouts using a product vs. process focus as the basis for grouping and placement

of machines in a manufacturing facility layout.

Modular Layouts (Irani and Huang, 2000): Most facility layout designers are

familiar with typical layout configurations such as machining centers, flowlines,

branched flowlines, cells, single or multi-process functional departments, flowshops,

jobshops, etc. Typically, a single type of layout configuration, usually Functional or

Cellular, is chosen for a new facility. What if each of these standard layout

configurations is viewed as a layout module within which the flow pattern corresponds to

a portion of the overall material flow network in the facility? In that case, a customized

- 12 -
facility layout could be generated which contains a combination of one or more of these

layout modules. This approach would decompose the overall material flow network for

the facility into a network of different manufacturing subsystems, each of which has well-

understood scheduling characteristics.

Multi-Channel Manufacturing (Meller, 2000): Facility design is important since it

is the substrate upon which the conceptual manufacturing system resides. Therefore,

when a manufacturing system is developed, we must design the facility to effectively

implement this system. There is a new awareness that jobshop, flowshop, and cellular

manufacturing system designs are not effective since they cannot respond to evolving

production requirements. Each of these systems has one characteristic in common: In

general, there is only one channel through the manufacturing system for each product.

Multi-Channel Manufacturing, or MCM for short, is based on the simple observation that

an effective manufacturing system provides multiple channels (or paths) for most

manufactured products as they flow through the system. This allows each product to

flow through the facility by choosing the channel that allows for the greatest

manufacturing system efficiency at that time. Designing facilities around this concept

will mean designing facilities that explicitly increase the channels available for each

product. This may mean an increase in the capital investment or an increase in the

routing flexibility for any product that is made in the facility. In either case, traditional

layout designs - process, product, and cellular layouts - have to adapt to this change by

expanding layout objective functions from departmental adjacencies and travel distances

to also consider work-in-process and throughput time.

- 13 -
 Organization of Factories as Responsibility Networks (Montreuil and Lefrancois,

1996): Contemporary factory organization theory is built upon the categorization of

factories in terms of the type of responsibility that is to be assigned to each cell. From a

product orientation, product, group and fractal factories are differentiated. In a product

factory, each cell is devoted to a single product, for example, as a product line or a fixed

product cell. In a group factory, the products are divided into groups or families and each

cell is responsible for a specific group. In a fractal factory with, say, four fractal cells,

each cell is to be responsible for about one fourth of the production for almost every

product. From a process orientation, function, process and holographic factories are

differentiated. In a functional factory, every basic process has a cell devoted to it, so a

factory has welding cells, milling cells, etc. In a process cell, every cell is responsible for

a composite process of one or more subprocesses. For example, in a casting plant, the

melt shop is a process cell responsible for all melting-related operations for all alloys. In

a holographic factory, instead of having a single cell composed of the eight lathes

necessary for all turning operations, there could be, say, four holographic turning cells,

each composed of two lathes; these cells are strategically distributed throughout the

factory. Their research proposes a unifying framework modeling the factory organization

as a responsibility network. Such a network is composed of cells having clear sets of

responsibility assignments for combined sets of suppliers, input products, processes,

output products and clients, for a particular time window. This framework enables the

elaboration of a wide variety of factory organizations, each tailored to the specific

factory. It encompasses all contemporary factory types and all widely implemented so-

- 14 -
called hybrid factories. Forcing all cells of a factory to have the same type of

responsibility becomes an exception rather than the prescribed norm. A factory network

may include a combination of the contemporary types of cells, as well as new breeds such

as a cell devoted to treating a percentage of the production requirements for the early

shared processes required by a specific group of products. Time being explicitly

considered, the network may be planned to dynamically evolve. It may also be

dynamically reconfigured through the use of very short-term virtual cells devoted to

specific pools of product orders. The layout of the network may also be dynamically

reconfigured. This organizational framework generalizes easily to the extended enterprise

organization.

2.3. Trends in Facility Layouts observed in Industry

The modern manufacturing facility experiences significant changes in product

designs, process plans, demand volumes, product mix, product life cycles and production

routings. Flexible manufacturing machines and cells that possess process and product

mix flexibilities are being extensively used. Developments in shop floor control

technology and material handling systems have reduced the impact of travel distances

and inter-operation separation on the type of physical layout designed for a facility. Being

aware of that traditional facility layouts are usually not suitable for these changes,

manufacturers nowadays have been seeking for systematic and efficient methods to

layout their facilities that were previously developed using traditional design strategy of

- 15 -
process layout or the principle of place where space is available. Consequently, some

trends in facility layouts have emerged in industry:

Multi-Channel Manufacturing (MCM): MCM, as implemented at Electric Box &

Enclosures (E-Box), Trussville, AL, is based on the simple observation that in an

effective manufacturing system, multiple channels (or paths) are provided for each

manufactured products as it flows through the system (Meller and DeShazo, 2000).

Instead of having one channel through the manufacturing facility for each product,

multiple channels (or routes) are provided which allows the product to flow through the

facility by choosing the channel that allows for the greatest manufacturing system

efficiency at that time. In the particular application reported by the authors, three product

families GZ1 and GN are A-product families, GZ2 and P are B-product families, AL

and SS are C-product families were formed. The A-product families include

approximately 100-200 items, the B-product families include approximately 500-1000

items and the C-product families include many items, including most of the specialty

order items. The MCM concept was utilized in the design of three flexible cells such that

all cells could accommodate the A-products, two of the three cells could handle the B-

products and one cell could handle the C-products.

Modular Multi-Station CNC Machining Center: The TRIFLEX center, marketed

by Turmatic Systems, Inc., St. Louis, MO, allows simultaneous machining using up to 7

machining units and retrofitting of additional machining units. Automatic loading and

unloading systems can be fitted without difficulty with potential for full integration into

equal or other machine systems. Especially significant is the fact that a single machining

- 16 -
unit can be fitted to a long base slide which enables the machining of all sides of a

workpiece in one station and machining of the front face in another station. Therefore, 5-

side machining is possible, even with only 2 machining units fitted.

Modular Manufacturing Systems: The Industrial Automation Systems group of

UNOVA Inc. provides the automotive industry with durable, modular high-volume

flexible machining systems that can grow and change with global market conditions.

Modular system architecture could allow car makers to reconfigure lines and utilize 70%-

80% of their original manufacturing system investment. Further, the time to install

modular machines is reduced by 33% when compared to conventional manufacturing

lines. Lamb Technicon Machining Systems, a UNOVA company that designs and installs

agile manufacturing systems for smaller volumes of finished parts, has developed

modular designs with common base features, electronics, coolant, hydraulics and

computerized controls. Their high-productivity Mach I dual-spindle CNC machines and

flexible Jaguar machining modules are capable of operating in a full line or as stand-

alone machining centers.

Portable Cells: The TRAK QuikCell QCM-1 available from Southwestern

Industries, Inc. is a compact and mobile milling machine that has found application in

small lot jobshop machining. Specifically, it can be located in close proximity to the one

or two primary machining and/or turning centers dedicated to the production of a family

of parts that require preliminary or secondary operations to be performed on other

machines. The foundation of the machine tool consists of a base casting for easy moving

with a pallet jack from any side. The small footprint of the machine allows it to fit

- 17 -
through most doors and its rigid frame (2750 lbs.) does not require re-leveling after

moving. Quick disconnects are available for electrical supply, air for coolant sprayer,

power draw bar and air hose. Another example of a company that produces portable

machine tools is Climax Portable Machine Tools, Inc. Their portable machine tools do

the same job as stationary machine tools used for repairing turbines, paper machinery,

heavy equipment, etc. the portable machine tool goes to the workplace and it mounts on

the workpiece instead of the other way around.

Holonical Manufacturing System: The HG500II and HG400 III cells of Hitachi

Seiki USA, Inc. consist of HG Series machining centers and a traverse type pallet loader.

Their modular system configuration allows easy system expansion on the production site.

The cell controller, which uses Hitachi Seikis own high-grade high-speed sequencer,

provides a variety of routing and machine loading functions to fulfill the production plan

and product mix.

Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS): An RMS is a new class of

manufacturing system that combines the high throughput of a Dedicated Manufacturing

Line (DML), or Transfer Line, with the product mix flexibility of Flexible Manufacturing

Systems (FMS), but also is able to react to changes quickly [Koren et al, 1999]. This is

achieved through:

Design of a system and its machines for adjustable structure that enable

system scalability in response to market demands and system/machine

adaptability to new products. Structure may be adjusted at the system level

ex. by addition of machines and at the machine level ex. by changing machine

- 18 -
 hardware and control software, adding spindles and axes, changing tool

magazines and integrating advanced controllers; and,

Design of a manufacturing system around the part family (and cellular layout)

with the customized flexibility required for producing all parts of this part

family.

Once the best part families are determined, machine designers will use a library of

generic modules to create a customized but flexible machine that can machine a family of

parts. To illustrate this concept, the reconfigurable factory could begin with an arch-type

milling machine with a single spindle unit on one side for a specific part family, that

expands to a two-spindle machine handling two product lines.

Manufacturing Segmentation: A project implemented in 1984 at Showa

Manufacturing Company, a maker of radiators and boilers, proves the effectiveness of

Manufacturing Segmentation (Womack and Jones, 1996). The project was to convert coil

making and assembly from a batch process to single-piece flow by creating a cell for the

pipe-cutting, fin-press, expansion, cleaning, brazing, leak testing, and final assembly

steps. High-speed machines that were hard to change over were replaced by designs

created in the companys tool shop, so that the cell could convert from one coil design to

another in only a few minutes before resuming operations. The output of the cell was then

fed directly into a simplified and shortened final assembly track. In less than a week, it

was possible to eliminate half the plant space, 95 percent of the WIP, half of the human

effort, and 95 percent of the throughput time needed to make a coil.

- 19 -
 Flow Manufacturing Linked Cells: With the objective of producing the highest

quality product in a customer-responsive flow process, Flow Manufacturing is based

upon a production flow process that uses Kanbans to pull material into and through the

process as the material is consumed (Costanza, 1996). In Flow Manufacturing, material is

pulled from a nearby point of supply into the rated-based production flow process. It is a

flexible pull system that views a product as a pile of parts that is pulled through a

sequence of events where work is performed by people or machines to create the product.

The flow process in the system may resemble an inverse tree with individual processes,

with assembly line or cell branches, which are always designed at the highest required

rate and the corresponding shortest required cycle time, feeding into the main flow at the

points at which their components are needed.

Tailored Business Streams (TBS): The concept of TBS was introduced and

implemented by Boeing Co. in order to meet the challenge of balancing market

requirements with simplified design, and establish market-driven options that reflect

customers need TBS divides Boeings parts and processes into three streams to arrive

at simpler, reusable, more cost-effective processes and solutions:

TBS1 - Parts and processes that go into every airplane in a major model.

These parts and processes are basic and stable because they do not require

new design, customer decisions or replanning for each new customer

introduction.

- 20 -
 TBS2 - Parts and processes that are reusable, including options that are

common to a minor model and options that are available for a customer to

order. TBS2 parts are available for reuse and compatible with other option

combinations, which allows customers greater opportunities to make decisions

about options closer to the delivery date

TBS3 - Parts and processes that are unique, custom designed or need special

tooling, whose design is not meant to be reused. A TBS3 part requires

additional flow time compared to a similar TBS2 part

- 21 -
 CHAPTER 3

SYSTEMATIC LAYOUT PLANNING WITH PRODUCTION FLOW ANALYSIS

3.1. Department Splitting and Machine Duplication

The division and distribution of machines in a process department into several

cells when converting from a Functional Layout into a Cellular Layout is referred to as

the Machine Duplication problem in the literature on Cellular Manufacturing Systems.

From a historical perspective, Ireson (1952) stated that the combination method of

departmentalization is accomplished by a Functional Layout of machines and equipment

in long, narrow departments, with the products flowing at right angles to the departments

. (but) there must be sufficient similarity in the products and the steps of production

so that such a plan can be followed without excessive backtracking of parts as they are

processed through the several departments. Hence, depending on the part mix and

production volumes, a facility layout may need to adopt one or more options for machine

duplication. The pioneering paper on Production Flow Analysis by Burbidge (1963) was

the first to specifically discuss machine duplication to divide and distribute the

departments in a Functional Layout in order to design a Cellular Layout. As regards

machine duplication to create independent cells, Prof. Burbidge wrote compare the

- 22 -
plant requirements for the different packs (or part families) and reintegrate to produce the

desired number of groups, with the minimum number of work center duplication between

groups. Burbidge converted the part routings into a 0-1 machine-part matrix and used

manual sorting of this matrix to identify the part families and machine groups to

constitute the various cells. McAuleys (1972) Single Linkage Cluster Analysis method

and Kings (1980) Rank Order Clustering algorithm were the first computer methods to

automate this manual process using a 0-1 machine-part matrix representation of the

original operation sequences. However, the machine-part matrix representation of the

operation sequences has several drawbacks: (a) it loses the flow directions and (b) it does

not have the structure of an adjacency or planar graph that could be used for layout

design. Therefore, the cluster analysis and matrix decomposition methods for cell

formation are not directly usable for design of a facility layout with machine duplication.

The From-To Chart is the standard input to algorithms for the design of

Functional Layouts - Quadratic Assignment Problem (Armour and Buffa, 1963),

Maximum Weight Planar Graph Embedding (Seppanen and Moore, 1970), Cut Tree

(Montreuil and Ratliff, 1989), Space Filling Curve (Bozer et al, 1994). Unfortunately,

these algorithms are unsuitable for the design of facility layouts with machine duplication

(or department decentralization) since the routings of the individual products are lost due

to aggregation in the From-To Chart. In contrast, the algorithms for design of Cellular

Layouts address the machine duplication problem because they use the operation

sequences as input data. Vakharia and Wemmerlov (1990) present a cell formation

method based on analysis of the operation sequences of the parts. Their method

- 23 -
duplicates machines to create a system of flowline-type cells with minimum intercell

flows. Ho et al (1993) present a layout design technique that exploits the similarity of

product assembly sequences in a product family to design a network-type layout for a

multi-products flowline. Moodie et al (1994) discuss the case of design of a network of

manufacturing cells using product sequence similarity analyis where all cells have a

flowline layout. The literature review revealed an interesting dichotomy in layout design

methods layout planners have either used the From-To Chart to design Functional

Layouts or the operation sequences to design Cellular Layouts. But, the operation

sequences have never been used to design layouts that distribute machines from the same

department at multiple locations in the facility i.e. layouts that do not have a rigid part

family or process focus as a basis for machine grouping and location.

3.2. History of From-To Chart

Ireson (1952) does not specifically generate a From-To Chart when utilizing the

routings of a sample of parts to generate an arrangement of departments, essentially a

Functional Layout, to minimize material handling in a 10-department facility. However,

he did use the standard principles for facility layout in his manual analysis:

P-Q analysis to select the sample of products that contribute to 75-90% of the

total material flows

Minimization of travel distances and provision of direct routes for material

handling for the major products (and longer hauls for the minor products)

- 24 -
In addition, he refers to a comparison of the process charts for the major products to

seek similarities in the sequence of operations to give some indication of the best

arrangement of the departments.

To understand the origin of the total reliance in facility layout on the From-To

Chart instead of the original operation sequences (or routings) from which it is generated,

a review of the earliest papers on From-To Charts (also referred to as Cross Charts)

(Buffa, 1955; Cameron, 1952; Farr, 1955; Smith, 1955; Lundy, 1955; Weiss and Smith,

1955; Schneider, 1957; Bolz and Hagemann, 1958; Llewellyn, 1958; Cameron, 1960;

Reis and Andersen, 1960; Schneider, 1960) - was conducted. In addition, the earliest

textbooks on Facility Layout (Apple, 1950; Immer, 1950; Muther, 1955; Reed, 1961;

Moore, 1962) were studied. The following conclusions were made about why the

From-To Chart, and not the original operation sequences from which it is generated, has

always been used for facility layout:

The operation sequences for all the products were initially entered into a

Multi-Product Process Chart (Muther, 1955). However, no analyses were

done using this chart. Instead, the routings were consistently aggregated into

a From-To Chart and a Flow Diagram for visual/manual layout design (Farr,

1955).

The From-To Chart was used to reduce a large quantity of data into a very

compact form so that it may be more readily analyzed (Smith, 1955). Pareto

Analysis and sampling techniques were recommended to select a subset of

parts where the parts are too numerous (Buffa, 1955). Schnieder (1960)

- 25 -
 suggested that the reason for using a From-To Chart was that much layout

work is being performed by people who do not have the training nor the

background to understand and apply higher mathematics.

Smith (1955) felt that it was a suitable charting technique for the design of

Process (Functional) and Line (Product) layouts by indicating how to

minimize backtracking by changing the operation sequences of the offending

part. Although, Lundy (1955) did not consider direction of movement

important in the design of a Process (or Functional) Layout.

Buffa (1955) did suggest that the Block Diagram could be used to identify

. combinations of work centers for practical departmentalization . based

upon workcenter sizes and similarity of work performed .

Cameron (1960) does report an analysis to divide manufacturing facilities

between buildings to eliminate inter-building transport and increase percent

of product self-sufficiency of each building. In essence, each building could

be viewed as a Focused Factory or Product Cell.

Based on this study of the history of the From-To Chart, it was concluded that the

use of the From-To Chart as the primary input for facility layout was driven by two

factors in the 1950s:

The need to keep the problem size small to facilitate manual analysis (the

number of departments in a large facility could range from 20-50 whereas the

number of unique product routings could range from 250-5000+)

- 26 -
 The overwhelming preference for the Functional Layout in industry at that

time

It is an interesting coincidence that, Burbidge (1963) proposed his ideas for machine

duplication to design a Cellular Layout whereas Armour and Buffa (1963) introduced

their CRAFT program to design a Functional Layout.

3.3. Fundamental Limitations of the From-To Chart

In a typical facility layout project, initial (raw) data consisting of (a) the

departments in the facility and the approximate area of each department, as shown in

Table 3.1, and (b) the operation sequences and batch quantities for the parts (or products)

being produced in that facility, as shown in Table 3.2, is obtained. This data in Tables 3.1

and 3.2 is transformed into a From-To Chart, as shown in Table 3.3. This chart captures

the cumulative volume of material flow between any pair of departments. The From-To

Chart is input to a standard commercial facility layout package, such as

FACTORYFLOW, STORM, SPIRAL, PLANOPT and BLOCPLAN, to generate the

Functional Layout in Figure 3.1. In the ideal case, if the operation sequence of each part

in the sample of parts used to generate the From-To Chart is decomposed into moves

between consecutive pairs of departments, then each of these moves should be between

two adjacent departments. However, in the Functional Layout designed using a From-To

Chart, several flows will occur between non-adjacent departments i.e. departments that

do not share a common boundary. If it were possible to identify the particular parts whose

operation sequences contain the non-adjacent flows, then they could be eliminated,

- 27 -
simplified or reduced using any of several material flow simplification strategies.

Unfortunately, in the process of aggregating all the operation sequences into a From-To

Chart, the routings of the individual parts are lost. Thereby, if a department is split and

machines from it placed at several locations on the shopfloor, then the analyst cannot

determine which products will get routed to each department copy. This difficulty was

experienced by Holstein and Berry (1970) when they attempted to identify the few major

paths in a jobshop along which large volumes of flow occur by taking successive powers

of the transition matrix generated from the From-To Chart. This method failed because

(a) it could not account for backtracking and (b) it generated meaningless routings. Their

alternative method, which enumerated paths directly from routing data, did not suffer the

difficulties of the earlier statistical path-finding method.

Department Symbol Description of the Department Area*

F Foundry 3
B Deburring 3
M Milling 2
D Drilling 2
G Grinding 1
A Assembly 3
I Inspection 2
R Robot Welding 1
P Plating 2
S Packaging 3
* Expressed in Number of Grid Squares

Table 3.1: Departments in the Jobshop

- 28 -
 Part # Operation Sequence Batch Quantity
1 FBDGIS 6
2 FBMIGPIS 8
3 FBMIPIS 7
4 FBDGPIS 7
5 FBDMPIS 7
6 FBMRPAIS 3
7 FRPAIS 3
8 FBMRPAIS 3
9 FBMAIS 3
10 FBDMAIS 7
11 FBDAIS 4
12 FBDAIS 3
13 FBDSAIS 4

Table 3.2: Operation Sequences and Batch Quantities of Parts produced in the Jobshop

F B D G I S M P R A
F - 62 3
B - 38 24
D - 13 4 14 7
G - 6 15
I 8 - 65 7
S - 4
M 15 - 7 6 10
P 29 - 9
R 9 -
A 30 -

Table 3.3: From-To Chart for Facility Layout Design for the Jobshop

- 29 -
 F R
A
B D M P
G
I
S

Figure 3.1: Functional Layout generated using Tables 3.1 and 3.2

The above limitation of the From-To Chart was recognized as early as 1955. In

response to Wayland P. Smiths article (1955), Paul E. Weiss (1955) wrote in the Readers

Comments section of the Journal of Industrial Engineering . We found that 30% of

our material handling was to a central inspection station and it became obvious that

decentralization was worthwhile. One can tell from the chart data how many parts will

go to each new inspection station but one does not know where parts will go after this

station without compiling new data . In his reply, Smith concurred that it is

certainly frustrating, as well as time-consuming, to search through the original data all

over again when this is necessary because the data in each block is mixed, and it is

impossible to tell where the parts will go after they reach the newly established station. It

is also impossible to be sure which of the newly established stations should receive the

parts since the station that they would be sent to under the new system depends not only

on where they come from but, also, where they will go next . Smith did not favor

running through a large number of routings by hand to implement decentralization

which, in essence, is core to the idea of the machine duplication observed in the non-

traditional layouts shown in Figure 2.2.

- 30 -
 BLOCK LAYOUT
VISUALIZATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
y WINSABA
y FACTORYOPT (in VISFACTORY) y MPX
y SPIRAL y PROMODEL
y CRIMFLO y ARENA
y MALAGA y TAYLOR II
y MATFLO y QUEST
y PLANOPT y FACTORYPLAN (in VISFACTORY)
y STORM y FACTORYFLOW

GROUP TECHNOLOGY

y PROFILER
y MINITAB MULTI-CRITERION EVALUATION OF LAYOUT ALTERNATIVES
y SAS
y PDM Products y EXPERT CHOICE
y SUPER TREE

TOOLS FOR DESIGN OF

FACILITY LAYOUTS
- 31 -

MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS

y FACTORYFLOW (in VISFACTORY)

y PFAST
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAYOUT ALTERNATIVES

y EASYABC

PROCESS FLOW MAPPING

CAPACITY PLANNING AND SIZING OF LAYOUT ALTERNATIVES
y VISIO
y OPTIMA y LINDO
y SIMUL8 y CPLEX
y ARENA (BPR Template) y GAMS
y MPX
y FACTORYMODELER

Figure 3.2: Software Packages for Facility Layout

3.4. Limitations of Some Concepts and Assumptions

Figure 3.2 presents a potential toolkit of existing software packages that could be

used to support a design process for facility layout. However, there is no formal

methodology that systematically incorporates these tools into an effective design process

suitable for jobshops. The reason is that all existing Block Layout programs are based

on the following three classical research themes: (1) The Systematic Layout Planning

(SLP) view of layout design, (2) The Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP)

formulation of the Facility Layout Problem (FLP), and, (3) The CRAFT software for

computer-assisted design of a block layout for a facility. However, experience with a

variety of industry-sponsored projects has raised the following doubts about the universal

validity of the concepts and assumptions that are the foundation of the majority of

research on layout design:

Use of the Travel Chart as input data: The traditional input data for layout

design has been the Travel Chart. But, this chart aggregates the routings and

production quantities of all the products produced in a facility. Being a simple

graph, it prevents machine duplication analysis. Thereby, it limits the

facilities planner to the design of a single type of layout the Functional

layout. Instead, the Multi-Product Process Chart is better suited for jobshop

layout since it captures the machines (or departments in a facility, as does the

From-To Chart) and shows the unique routing of each product being produced

in the facility. The chart is essentially a hypergraph representation of the

facility since it treats each routing as a hyperedge that connects a sequence of

- 32 -
 machines (or departments) in the layout. This representation of the layout

problem is standard practice in the domain of VLSI CAD. With routing

information embedded in the layout, the design of layout configurations, other

than the Functional layout, becomes possible because partitioning the edge list

will allow duplication of machines in several locations in the facility.

Number of part samples used to design a layout: The traditional practice has

been to use the 80-20 rule (or ABC Analysis) to select one sample of products

that is used for design of the facility layout. However, a single sample is not

an accurate representation for the part mix processed by a jobshop. A method

is required to integrate the layouts generated for several samples of routings

since the final layout must be robust to changes in the product mix over time.

Sampling criteria used to select the part samples used to design a layout: The

80-20 rule used for P-Q Analysis uses essentially a single criterion for

selecting the sample of products for layout design - production volume.

However, minimization of total material handling distance has been the

classical objective in facility layout. However, given a population of

products, if one changes the selection criteria1, then the samples of products

chosen could differ from the one chosen based purely on production volume.

Differences in the layouts generated using such competing criteria have never

been evaluated. Hence, there is need for developing multi-criterion sampling

techniques to select several samples of products for designing a robust layout,

instead of relying only on material handling as the sole design criterion.

- 33 -
 Use of a single annual production quantity for each product: In a typical

facility layout, one aggregates the monthly demands for a product into a single

annual demand quantity which is factored into the single aggregate From-To

Chart used for layout design. However, this use of a single aggregate From-

To Chart may be acceptable only in the case of low mix-high volume

facilities. Instead, it may be more correct to use the monthly order quantities

(the sampling frequency can be changed) for all the products, generate a

From-To Chart for each months product mix and then generate a block layout

for the facility for each month. This would possibly show a different location

for a department from period-to-period in comparison with its layout based on

a single aggregate From-To Chart. Clearly, there is a need for methods to

design dynamic/reconfigurable layouts that metamorphose and adjust to

monthly, even quarterly, changes in the production volumes and mix of active

products.

Choices for layout configurations for a facility: The traditional set of layout

configurations that are discussed in any textbook and are the focus of most

research are: Functional, Cellular and Flowline. New configurations such as

Holonic, Fractal, Hybrid, Flexible, Virtual Cells, Modular, Reconfigurable,

etc. have been discussed in the research literature. However, it is unclear if

these novel configurations have been implemented in industry and have

shown to have a better performance compared to the classic layouts.

1
Other criteria for sample selection could be Annual Revenue, Frequency of Ordering, Weight, Volume,
Shape Complexity, Profit Margin and Routings.
- 34 -
 Measures and criteria used to design and evaluate a facility layout: Measures

such as Total Adjacency Score or Total Material Handling Distance are static

i.e. they do not relate to the dynamic performance of a facility. Also, these

measures relate only to the material handling component of the cycle time of a

product, ignoring the impact of setup, loading/unloading, processing and

queuing delays that occur at the individual workcenters. The fundamentally

incorrect assumption underlying the static measures is that all jobs are

transferred instantaneously and concurrently between all workcenters.

Whereas, the reality is just the opposite - pallets and unit loads wait to be

picked up and may travel distances larger than the shortest distance in the

optimal or existing layout. Lastly, there is no economic value embedded in

these static measures. A decision to change the layout of a facility should

compute the benefits of reductions in WIP and increases in order fulfillment

achieved. Clearly, there is a need a single time-based cost model that attaches

an economic value to every value-adding, as well as non-value adding, delay

in the throughput time of every product produced in a facility.

This research focuses on two of the above limitations of Systematic Layout

Planning (SLP): (1) it lacks a method to use product routings, instead of the From-To

chart, as input data, and (2) it does not have the ability to generate layouts that are a

hybrid combination of Functional and Cellular layouts.

- 35 -
3.5. Systematic Layout Planning with Production Flow Analysis

Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) (Muther, 1973) is an organized way to conduct

layout design. SLP consists of a framework of phases through which each layout design

project passes, a pattern of step-by-step procedures for layout planners to perform, and a

set of conventions for identifying and evaluating various activities and alternatives

involved in any layout design procedure. Figure 3.3 presents the overall structure of the

SLP design process.

SLP is based on aggregation of an Activity Relationship Chart and/or a From-To-

Chart into an Activity Relationship Diagram. This is followed by the determination of the

amount of space to be assigned to each activity and the availability of space for it. Based

on modifying considerations and practical limitations, a number of layout alternatives are

developed and evaluated. The preferred alternative is then implemented. The SLP

procedure can be used sequentially to develop first a block layout and then a detailed

layout for each planning department. In the latter application, relationships between

workstations, storage locations and entrances to and exits from the department are used to

determine the relative locations of activities.

As stated by Muther (1973), in process-dominated industries often the most

significant aspect of layout planning is Flow of Materials. Flow of Materials analysis

is the heart of layout planning wherever movement of materials is a major portion of the

process. SLP uses the From-To Chart as the input for Flow of Materials analysis.

However, in the process of aggregating all the operation sequences into a From-To Chart,

the routings of the individual parts are lost.

- 36 -
 Input Data and Activities

Flow of Materials Activity Relationship

Relationship Diagram

Space Requirements Space Available

Space Relationship Diagarm

Modifying Considerations Practical Limitations

Develop Layout Alternatives

Evaluation

Figure 3.3: The Systematic Layout Planning Design Process (Muther, 1973)

- 37 -
 The simple weighted directed graph structure of the From-To Chart may be

suitable for the design of a single classic type of layout for a manufacturing facility the

Functional (or Process) Layout - since a department does not have to be split and

duplicated at multiple locations. If it is desired to design a layout that necessitates

department splitting, such as a Cellular Layout, then it may be more appropriate to use

the original operation sequences from which the Travel Chart was generated. Therefore,

we propose an improved way to conduct layout planning, in which principles and

algorithms for Production Flow Analysis are used for Flow of Materials analysis.

Production Flow Analysis (PFA) is a set of methods that helps manufacturers to

identify causes of delay in material flows such as complex operation sequences, high

volume and variety of parts, variety of machines, ineffective facility layout, and

inappropriate assignment of machines for operations. When applied to a single factory,

the classical framework for manual implementation of PFA consists of four stages, each

stage achieving material flow reduction for a progressively reducing portion of the

factory: Factory Flow Analysis (FFA), Group Analysis (GA), Line Analysis (LA) and

Tooling Analysis (TA), which can be automated by a set of algorithms (Figure 3.4).

In FFA, dominant material flows between shops (or buildings) are identified.

In addition, if parts are observed to backtrack between any of the shops, these

flows are eliminated by a minor redeployment of equipment. FFA may often

be redundant for a factory that essentially consists of a single machine or

fabrication shop.

- 38 -
 In GA, the flows in each of the shops identified by FFA is analyzed. GA

analyzes operation sequences of the parts being produced in a particular shop

to identify manufacturing cells. Loads are calculated for each part family to

obtain the equipment requirements for each cell. Each cell usually contains

all the equipment necessary to satisfy the complete manufacturing

requirements of its part family. Due to sharing and non-availability of

equipment, some intercell material flows and flows to/from vendors may

arise.

In Line Analysis (LA), a linear or U-layout is designed for the machines

assigned to each cell. The routings of each part assigned to the cell and the

frequency of use of each routing are used to develop a cell for efficient

transport as well as minimum material handling and travel by operators.

In Tooling Analysis (TA), the principles of GA and LA are integrated with

data on the shape, size, material, tooling, fixturing, etc. attributes of the parts.

TA helps to schedule the cell by identifying families of parts with similar

operation sequences, tooling and setups. It seeks to sequence parts on each

machine and to schedule all the machines in the cell to reduce setup times and

batch sizes. This increases available machine capacity on bottleneck work

centers in the cell.

- 39 -
 Input Data for Products
- Product Families
- Demand Profile for each Product
- BOM, Parts List for each Product

Assembly Precedence Input Data for Parts

Trees for all Products
- Route Sheets
- Demand Volumes Set of
- Frequency of Ordering Travel Charts
- Common Nodes
- Common Branches
- Common Subtrees Machine-Part
Matrix Complete Set of - Maximum Common
Operation Sequences Subgraphs
- Isomorphism in
Travel Chart Directed Graphs
Single
Operation Sequence

Asymmetric
- 40 -

Symmetric
Similarity Travel Chart Travel Chart
Coefficients - Longest Common
Sequence
Weighted
- Shortest Supersequence
Similarity
- Sequence Clustering
Coefficients
- Sequence Alignment
- Frequencies of Visitation - Optimal Linear Layout
- Loops (Repeating machines) - Strong Components
- Crossovers between Loops - Circuits
- Cycles - Maximum Spanning
- Repeating Subsequences
- Permutation Generation - Spanning Tree Arborescence
- Reachability Digraphs
- Cluster Analysis - Optimum Communication - Quadratic Assignment
- Reaching Digraphs
- K-Means Cluster Analysis Spanning Tree Problem
- Minimum Equivalent Digraph
- Graph Partitioning - Cut Tree - Optimal Linear Layout
- Multivariate Statistics - Maximum Planar Graph - Reachability Digraphs
- Detection of Bottleneck - Quadratic Assignment - Minimum Equivalent
Machines Problem Digraph

Figure 3.4: Algorithms for Production Flow Analysis (Irani et al, 2000)
 As discussed earlier, the classical framework of SLP is inadequate for design of

jobshop layouts due to the two limitations in the stage of Flow of Materials analysis: (a)

incapability of using product routings, instead of the From-To chart, as input data, and (b)

incapability of generating layouts that are a hybrid combination of Functional and

Cellular layouts. Adoption of algorithms and principles of PFA in this stage can eliminate

these limitations. Figure 3.5 shows the enhanced SLP design process after incorporation

of PFA into the classical framework of SLP.

The integration of PFA in the enhanced SLP design process can be done using the

Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit (PFAST) (Irani et al, 2000). Figure

3.6 and Figure 3.7 demonstrate the overall and detailed frameworks, respectively, for

using PFAST to generate a variety of facility layouts for a multi-product jobshop.

Depending on the particular type of layout being generated, the methodology for

department planning changes. Therefore, in addition to the use of From-To charts for

department planning, the program modules in PFAST use several other types of input

data, such as (a) operation sequences, (b) machine-part matrices (or bipartite graphs)

generated from operation sequences, and (c) hypergraphs generated from operation

sequences and machine-part matrices, as shown in Figure 3.8. Our research mainly

contributes to modular layout function in PFAST. Hence, this dissertation will focus on

the design methodology of layout modules and its underlying algorithms.

- 41 -
 Data Collection

Product Related:
Facility Related: Product Mix, Quantity, Revenue, Demand Distribution, Additional Data:
Size, Floorplan, Manufacturing Growth Patterns, Frequency of Orders, Stability of Material Handling and Storage
Equipment, Support Services, Life Cycle Demand, Setup Times and Process Times for all Characteristics

SLP
Operations

Analysis for Product Mix Segmentation

y Volume Analysis ?
y Volume Vs. Variety Analysis ?
y Volume Vs. Revenue Vs. Variety Analysis ?

Group Technology Y
Number of parts is large?

N
Sampling from Parts Population based on
Production Flow Analysis
Design and Manufacturing Attributes of Parts

PFA
Department Planning and Generation of Appropriate Layout Alternatives
based on Different Types of Manufacturing Focus

Feasibility Evaluation of Planned Departments and Layout Alternatives

y Capacity Requirements Planning
y Machine Allocation
y Robustness Analysis for Changes in Mix and Demand

Flow of Materials between Departments Activity Relationships between Departments

Relationship Diagram of Flow and Other-Than-Flow Relationships

Evaluation of Layout Alternatives to Select the Final Layout

Total Adjacency Score Simulation

Finite Capacity Scheduling

Total Material Handling Cost

Value Stream Mapping Queuing Theory

SLP
Throughput Accounting
Acitivity Based Costing Inventory Models Multi-Criterion Methods

Space Requirements Space Available

Space Relationship Diagram

Modifying Considerations Generate the Block Layout Practical Limitations

Implement the Block Layout

Figure 3.5: Systematic Layout Planning with Production Flow Analysis

- 42 -
 Product Mix, Routings, and Annual Production Quantities

From-To Chart String Matching String Clustering M-P Matrix QAP/MIP

Design Skeleton Common_Substrings Dendrogram Matrix Clustering

Clustering, Absorbing & Merging of Substrings Linear Embedding of Dendrogram

Modules K-means Clustering

Functional Layout Modular Layout Cascading Flowlines Cellular Layout Flowline Layout

Generate the Block Layout

Evaluate the Block Layout

Figure 3.6: Overall Framework of Production Flow Analysis using PFAST

- 43 -
 Operation sequences and production quantities for sample of parts

M-P Matrix Delete all singleton operation sequences From-To Chart

Similarity Coefficients In the routings, assign a single workcenter code to

different workcenters that have identical processing
capabilities Design Skeletons Maximum Weight
QAP/MIP
y MST Planar Graph
Matrix Clustering y MSA
y Cut Tree
Cluster operation sequences using Levenshtein
Distances
Cellular Layout

Eliminate identical operation sequences

Functional/Process Layout Flowline Layout

Find cycles and strong components in individual

operation sequences

Absorb strong components of cardinality=2 into

"super-workstations"

Rewrite operation sequences

Match strings to find common_substrings

Cluster operation sequences using Merger
Coefficients

Compute frequency of occurrence of each

common_substring
Generate initial dendrogram for cluster
analysis

Absorb common_substrings that are completely

contained in other common_substrings
Linear embedding of dendrogram using
tree manipulation algorithm

Merge common_substrings with consideration of

Alignment of operation sequences to cycles and strong components
generate the Modified Multi-Product
Process Chart (MM-PPC)

Cluster common_substrings using Merger

Coefficients
Detection and "absorption" of cycles and
strong components in operation sequences

Generate layout modules from clusters

Cascading Flowlines
Modular Layout Flexible Manufacturing Modules (FMM)

Figure 3.7: Detailed Framework of Production Flow Analysis Using PFAST

- 44 -
 Cluster Analysis and Multivariate Statistics

Verify the cluster compositions in the BDFobtained using matrix

clustering
Generate a linear ordering for all machines in each cluster and
sequence these strings one after the other in the machines
permutation of the BDF

Matrix Clustering (Bipartite Graph

Design Blackboard for Department Planning Partitioning)

Design for Flow Number of clusters

y Maximize directed flow (or Minimize backtracking) Shared machines that may need to be duplicated
y Minimize cross flows Bottleneck parts that link two or more clusters
String Matching and Alignment y Minimize Total Travel Distance Potential exception operations between clusters
y Minimize Total Travel Cost Adjacencies that will be required between different
Identify common_substrings of operations in pairs of cells because they have machines in
routings Form machine groups Match each m/c group common and appear consecutively in the BDF
Align common_substrings of operations and part families with its part family Machine Sharing
between similar routings y Specific to a single cell
Aggregrate clusters of substrings into layout Minimize dispersion (non- y Shared by only two cells
modules adjacencies) of locations y Shared by more than two cells
Minimize machine duplication that contain machines of Assignment of Parts
- 45 -

the same type y Clearly unique assignment to one cell

y Has at least 1-2 exception operations in one or
Honor the fixed location (and non-duplicatability) of all more other cells
"monuments" y Ambiguous - could belong in two or more cells

From-To Chart Analysis

Linear orderings - or to eliminate backtracking/bypass flows
Strong components
Block layout
Flows between bottleneck/shared machines in the BDF
Flows from-to other non-bottleneck machines in the BDF
MSA to prevent m/c duplication by increasing adjacencies among parallel flowlines

Figure 3.8: Utilization of Various PFAST Modules for Department Planning

 CHAPTER 4

MERGER COEFFICIENT A NEW STRING MATCHING METHOD FOR

COMPARISON OF OPERATION SEQUENCES

The Group Technology (GT) approach to manufacturing systems, introduced by

Burbigde (1975), has been recognized as an efficient way to reduce setup times, flow

times, inventories, work-in-process and throughput time. The basic idea of GT is the

decomposition of the manufacturing system into subsystems, by grouping parts into

families and classifying machines into cells, based on the similarity of part processing

requirements. A family of parts is composed of parts that have similar operation

sequences and require a set of functionally dissimilar machines to dedicatedly

manufacture these parts. These machines are then grouped into a manufacturing cell, thus

forming a subsystem of the manufacturing system. The effectiveness of the cell formation

depends on the measure of part routing similarity used to generate it. In this chapter, we

discuss the calculation of similarity between two operation sequences using the theory of

sequence comparison and propose a new similarity coefficient that is specifically

constructed for comparing operation sequences for manufacturing parts.

- 46 -
4.1. Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences

The theory of sequence comparison (Sankoff. and Kruskal, 1983) is a

methodology that attempts to compare two or more sequences or strings for identifying

differences and determining relationships. It deals with sequence comparison problems

in which the correspondence between sequences is unknown in advance, i.e., some

underlying corresponding relationships may be disrupted by the unmatched orders of

elements in both sequences. The applications of sequence comparison fall into two

categories: (1) discrete situations, such as molecular biology, string matching and editing

and text collation; and (2) continuous cases such as human speech, bird song and

handwriting recognition. Here, we focus on its application to the comparison of operation

sequences.

When comparing two operation sequences, the most obvious type of difference

between them is the substitution of one operation for another at the same position in the

sequence. Such differences are called substitutions or replacements. There are other

important types of differences, however, such as deletion of operations and insertion of

operations. Dealing with differences between sequences due to substitution, deletion and

insertion, is the central theme of operation sequence comparison. The editing of an

operation sequence based on one of the three differences is called an edit operation. The

three types of edit operations, from a facility layout design viewpoint, may result in

corresponding changes of layout. As illustrated in Figure 4.1, a deletion or insertion edit

operation means the addition of a bypass flow, while a substitution edit operation creates

a branched flow.

- 47 -
 Editing of Operation Sequences Corresponding Layout Change

A X B C
A X B C
Substitution
Y
A Y B C

A X B C

A X B C
Deletion (Insertion)

A B C

Figure 4.1: Layout Changes corresponding to Editing of an Operation Sequence

For analysis of differences between operation sequences, the following three

types of presentation are commonly used:

Trace (Figure 4.2). The trace analysis consists of the source sequence and the

target sequence, usually with lines from some operations in the source to some operations

- 48 -
in the target. An operation can have no more than one line, and the lines must not cross

each other (specifically, the source operations with lines must correspond in order to the

target operations with lines). The lines provide a correspondence, often partial, between

source sequence and target sequence, in forward or backward direction. If the operations

connected by a line are the same, the pair of operations is referred as an identity or a

continuation; if they are different, the pair constitutes a substitution. A source operation

having no line shows a deletion while a target operation having no line shows an

insertion.

Figure 4.2: Trace Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences

- 49 -
 Alignment (Matching). The alignment (or matching) analysis, as shown in Figure

4.3, consists of a matrix of two rows. The upper row consists of the source sequence,

possibly interspersed with null characters. The lower row consists of the target sequence,

also possibly interspersed with null characters. The column of null characters is not

permitted. A column having a null character below indicates deletion while a column

having a null character above indicates insertion. A column without a null character is

called a match, in which if the two operations are the same, it is a continuation;

otherwise, it is a substitution.

Figure 4.3: Alignment Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences

- 50 -
 Listing (Derivation). The listing (or deviation) analysis consists of an alternating

series of sequences and transformations (such as substitutions, deletions and insertions),

starting with the source sequence and ending with the target sequence, where two

adjacent sequences must differ only as provided by the operation of one of the three

differences. As illustrated in Figure 4.4, the listing analysis is actually a sequence of edit

operations that traces the transformation of the source sequence into the target sequence.

Figure 4.4: Listing Analysis of Differences between Operation Sequences

- 51 -
 Based on the definitions of the three types of analyses, it is obvious that, for any

given type, many analyses of the same total difference may be available for comparison

of the same pair of sequences. Each of these three types of analysis has its own

advantages. From the presentation viewpoint, Trace and Alignment are more favorable

than Listing thanks to their simplicity and comprehensiveness. From the analysis

viewpoint, however, Listing is more important because it can be generalized more

broadly than Alignment and Trace. Listing contains richer information than the other two

methods because it allows many successive changes to be made in a single position and

Alignment and Trace permit only one. In addition, Listing makes distinctions based on

the order in which changes are made, while Alignment and Trace do not.

4.2. Calculation of Distance/Similarity between Operation Sequences

Distance between two operation sequences is defined as the minimum length of

any acceptable analysis of the difference between these two sequences. Usually, the

length is calculated as the number of elementary edit operations performed to transform

one sequence into the other. The shorter the distance between two operation sequences,

the more similar they are; and vice versa. The distance between two operation sequences

that have the highest similarity, namely two identical sequences, should be zero.

Different definitions of distance/similarity between two operation sequences can be

described in terms of the following three parts:

- 52 -
 Elementary edit operations. Types of the edit operations allowed to perform

sequence transformation are the key to the distance/similarity calculation.

Each distance/similarity definition is based on certain set of edit operations,

called elementary edit operations. Most commonly, the elementary edit

operations are insertions, deletions and substitutions.

Acceptable analyses. Each distance/similarity definition is based on certain

class of acceptable analyses of the difference between two operation

sequences, where the acceptable analyses are based on the elementary edit

operations. Among the three types of analysis discussed in the previous

section, alignment and trace distances are more acceptable to calculate

distance/similarity between two operation sequences, since use of listing

distance would be too time-consuming. However, in many cases, listing

distance is the conceptual starting point and the mathematical equivalence of

listing distance with alignment and trace distance is used as a vital foundation

for comparison of operation sequences.

Length of acceptable analysis. Each distance/similarity definition is based on

a function for calculating the length of the acceptable analysis. The function

can be as simple as the number of edit operations performed to transform one

operation sequence into the other. It may also incorporate a system of weights

and/or parameters.

- 53 -
 The computational complexity of calculation of distance between two sequences

has been discussed in many literatures. Wagner and Fischer (1974) presented an

algorithm for minimizing the sequence of edit transformations that changes one string

into the other. The computational complexity of their algorithm is proportional to the

product of the lengths of the two strings. For the problem of calculating the optimal

alignment between two sequences of length n, Wong and Chandra (1976) proved that the

computational complexity is proportional to n2 based on some general assumptions, and

the best lower bound is linear in n. For the same problem, Masek and Patterson (1980)

presents an O(n2/log(n)) algorithm based on the assumption that the sequence elements

come from a finite alphabet and the weights of edit operations are all rational. When

applied to sequences with lengths of m and n (m<n), the computing time of this algorithm

is proportional to mn/min(m,log(n)).

4.3. Typical Distance/Similarity Measures for Comparison of Operation

Sequences

For the typical distance/similarity measures discussed in this section, the same set

of elementary edit operations for transformation between two operation sequences are

used, namely (1) insertion of an operation into a sequence; (2) deletion of an operation

from a sequence; and (3) substitution of an operation of a sequence with an operation in

the other sequence. Hence, the differences of these measures lie in their rules of

acceptable analysis and definitions of function for calculating the length of the acceptable

analysis.

- 54 -
1. Levenshtein Distance

Levenshtein distance has been the most commonly used measure for comparison

of the difference (similarity) of two operation sequences. Levenshtein distance is defined

as the smallest number of substitutions, deletions and insertions required to change

source sequence into target sequence (Levenshtein, 1966). It uses listings as the

acceptable analyses of sequence difference and a simple length function without weights

or parameters. Considering all listings from source sequence to target sequence, let the

length of each listing be the number of transformations it contains, then the distance is the

minimum length of any listing.

2. A Dissimilarity Coefficient integrated with Operation Commonality

Tam (1990) presented a dissimilarity coefficient method, based on the difference

between operation sequences, for part grouping. In the method used, the dissimilarity

coefficient, denoted by S c , of two operation sequences i and j is defined as follows:

S c [i, j ] = wn d n [i, j ] + wc (1 c[i, j ])

wn + wc = 1 and wn , wc 0

d n [i, j ] is the normalized weighted Levenshtein distance between operation

sequences i and j :

- 55 -
 d w [i, j ]
d n [i, j ] =
max{d w [x, y ] 1 x, y, number of parts}

d w [i, j ] = min (ws n s + wd nd + wi ni )

where ws , wd and wi are non-negative weights assigned to substitutions, deletions

and insertions respectively; n s , nd and ni are number of substitutions, deletions and

insertions respectively.

c[i, j ] is a coefficient representing the commonality of operations between

operation sequences i and j . It is defined as the number of common operations between

operation sequences i and j divided by the total number of the distinct operations in

these two sequences.

3. A Compliant Index based Similarity Coefficient

Ho et al (1993) proposed a heuristic pattern matching algorithm for multi-

flowlines layout design. In the proposed algorithm, a similarity coefficient approach is

used to compare the difference (similarity) between an operation sequence and a flow

path. In order to calculate the sequence similarity coefficient, a compliant index based on

trace analyses of differences between operation sequences is defined first.

The compliant index of the sequence of a part compared with a flow path is

determined by the number of operations in the sequence that have either in-sequence or

bypassing relationship with the sequence of the flow path. There are two kinds of

- 56 -
compliant indexes: forward compliant index and backward compliant index. These two

compliant indexes can be calculated by comparing the operation sequence of the part

with the sequence of the flow path forwards and backwards. The process of calculating

these two compliant indexes is illustrated in Figure 4.5.

Once the compliant indexes of both directions have been calculated, the sequence

similarity coefficient of this part can be calculated by dividing the sum of both compliant

indexes by twice the number of operations in this part:

CF + CB
CO =
2N

where

CO Sequence similarity coefficient of part

CF Compliant index of the part in forward direction

CB Compliant index of the part in backward direction

N Number of operations in the sequence of the part

Obviously, a part with higher sequence similarity coefficient means its sequence

is more similar to the sequence of the flow path.

- 57 -
 Flow Path: OP1 - OP2 - OP3 - OP2 - OP4 - OP5 - OP6
The forward compliant
index of part i is 4

Part i: OP1 - OP3 - OP4 - OP5 - OP2

Comparing Forwards

Flow Path: OP1 - OP2 - OP3 - OP2 - OP4 - OP5 - OP6

The backward compliant
index of part i is 3

Part i: OP1 - OP3 - OP4 - OP5 - OP2

Comparing Backwards

Figure 4.5: Comparison Process for Compliant Indexes

4. An LCS based Similarity Coefficient

Askin and Zhou (1998) proposed a similarity coefficient based on the longest

common subsequence (LCS) between parts for forming flowline manufacturing cells.

Like Ho et als similarity measure, this coefficient is also based on trace analyses of

operation sequence differences. The similarity coefficient sij between two operation

sequences Oi and Oj is defined as:

LCS ij LCS ij
s ij = max ,
Oi Oj

where LCSij is the longest common subsequence between Oi and Oj, and |x| is the number

of operations in sequence x.

- 58 -
4.4. Merger Coefficient

The majority of numerical measures of similarity or dissimilarity (distance)

between operation sequences, such as the Levenshtein distance and Tams dissimilarity

coefficient mentioned in the previous section, seek only the dissimilarities between two

strings ignoring their common substrings or common subsequences. These techniques,

however, are not efficient in situations where the numbers of operations in two sequences

differ significantly. In such cases, the matching segments in the two sequences are

overwhelmed by the unmatched residual segments in the longer sequence. In particular,

one sequence could be completely contained in another sequence and yet the two

sequences could be dissimilar according to the Levenshtein string edit distance measure.

Consider the following operation sequences:

O1 = (A, J)

O2 = (A, K)

O3 = (A, J, B, C, D, E)

O4 = (A, F, G, H, I, J).

If using the Levenshtein measure, the distance between O1 and O2 is 1, the

distance between O1 and O3 is 4, and the distance between O1 and O4 is 4. Accordingly,

O1 is more similar to O2 than to O3 and O4. O1 would therefore be grouped with O2 but

not with O3 or O4, although O1 is a substring of O3 and a subsequence of O4. This

grouping of operation sequences could result in unnecessary duplication of machines

- 59 -
between clusters. Although Tams dissimilarity coefficient takes into account operation

commonality, the generalization of the commonality measure based on the number of

total distinct operations in the two operation sequences still brings in the influence of

unmatched operations. Besides, it has two drawbacks. Firstly, the commonality of

operations between two sequences loses the track of the order of the common operations,

i.e. two operation sequences having high operation commonality may have very

dissimilar routings; secondly, the weights for the distance and commonality are chosen

subjectively.

There are some similarity/distance measures, like Ho et als compliant index

based similarity and Askin and Zhous LCS based similarity coefficient, capture the order

of common operations between two sequences, and thus eliminate the unintended

influence of long unmatched residual subsequences. However, as pointed out by Sankoff

and Kruskal (1983), no subsequence measure can provide substring information. These

measures focus on the order of operations in the sequences but ignore the gaps between

matching operations in the sequences. This could result in grouping of parts that will

experience significant bypass travel distance between consecutive operations in their

routings if they are produced on the same flowline. For example, both Ho et als and

Askin and Zhous similarity measures show that the similarity between O1 and O3 is equal

to the similarity between O1 and O4. This means O1 and O4 may be grouped together

although the travel distance from operation A to operation B will increase significantly if

the two parts are produced on the same flowline.

- 60 -
 To avoid such undesirable clustering due to the numerical similarity/dissimilarity

measures discussed earlier, we propose a new similarity measure called Merger

Coefficient for string clustering. This measure is capable of evaluating the feasibility of

merging or absorbing one operation sequence completely into another operation

sequence. Like most of the similarity/distance measures, Merger Coefficient use the same

set of elementary edit operations for transformation between two operation sequences, i.e.

substitutions, deletions and insertion. Proved to be effective in detecting common

subsequences and common substrings, trace analysis is chosen as the acceptable analysis

of differences between operation sequences. In preparation for calculation of the Merger

Coefficient between two operation sequences, the following two distances need to be

defined first:

Merger Distance. The Merger Distance for the absorption of sequence x into

sequence y is defined as the smallest number of substitutions and insertions of operations

in sequence y required to derive x from y using trace analysis, based on the set of trace

analyses of the differences between x and y, denoted by {Ti(x, y)}:

md ( x, y ) = min{( S i + I i ) i Ti ( x, y )}
i

where

md(x, y) Merger Distance for the absorption of sequence x into

sequence y

- 61 -
 Si Number of substitutions of operations in sequence y required in the

ith trace analysis

Ii Number of insertions of operations in sequence y required in the ith

trace analysis

Interruption Distance. The Interruption Distance for the absorption of x into y is

defined as the smallest number of non-ending deletions required, with md(x, y) fixed.

Non-ending deletions are defined as the deletions of one operation or several consecutive

operations whose position in sequence y is neither the start nor the end. A non-ending

deletion appear either between two consecutive insertion(s) and/or substitution(s), or

between two consecutive matching operations, or between an insertion (or substitution)

and a matching operation. The non-ending deletions in a trace analysis can be calculated

by subtracting the number of ending deletions from the total number of deletions. Here,

the ending deletions are defined as the deletions of one operation and/or several

consecutive operations that are the start or the end of sequence y. The formulation of the

Interruption Distance is given as follows:

{ }
id ( x, y ) = min ( Di Die ) i [ S i + I i = md ( x, y )]
i

where

id(x, y) Interruption Distance for the absorption of sequence x into

sequence y

- 62 -
 Di Number of deletions of operations in sequence y required in the ith

trace analysis

Die Number of ending deletions of operations in sequence y required in

the ith trace analysis

Note that the Merger Distance and the Interruption Distance are asymmetric, i.e.

md(x, y) and id(x, y) may not equal to md(y, x) and id(y, x) respectively. Actually, it is

highly unlikely that md(x, y) = md(y, x) and id(x, y) = id(y, x), when the lengths of the two

operation sequences are not the same. The calculation of these two distances is illustrated

in Figure 4.6.

- 63 -
 Sequence x C B F H G

Sequence y A C D E F G

Sequence y A C D E F G

B H

Optimal edit operations to absorb x into y:

y 2 total deletions including an ending deletion
of A and a non-ending deletion of E.
y a substitution of D by B.
y an insertion of H between F and G.
Therefore, md(x, y)=2 and id(x, y)=1.

Figure 4.6: Illustration of Calculating Merger Distance and Interruption Distance

We use a dynamic programming algorithm to calculate these two distances. The

computational complexity of the method is proportional product of the numbers of the

two operation sequences. This algorithm has been programmed into our PFAST

(Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit) software package, which is in the

process of patent application. Due to this restriction, we will not describe the detail of the

algorithm.

- 64 -
 Once the Merger Distance and Interruption Distance between any two operation

sequences x and y are identified, the Merger Coefficient between x and y, denoted by

mc(x, y), can be calculated as follows:

id ( y, x) N x N y
md ( y, x) + + 2

N N
max1 max max
,0 if N x > N y
Ny


id ( x, y ) N N
md ( x, y ) + + y 2 x
N max N max
mc( x, y ) = max1 ,0 if N x < N y
Nx



id ( x , y ) id ( y , x)
md ( x, y ) + md ( y, x) +
N max N max
max1 , 1 ,0 if N x = N y
Nx Ny

where Nmax is the number of operations in the longest operation sequence in the sample;

Nx and Ny represent the number of operations in sequences x and y, respectively. We can

see that the higher the Merger Coefficient between two operation sequences, the more

similar the sequences are. Based its definition, the Merger Coefficient has the following

properties:

1) 0 mc(x, y) 1;

2) mc(x, y) = mc(y, x);

3) mc(x, y) = 1, if and only operation sequences x and y are identical;

4) mc(x, y) = 0, if and only if operation sequences x and y have no

common operation.

- 65 -
 Unlike the distance/similarity measures discussed in the previous section, the

Merger Coefficient not only identifies common operations between two operation

sequences with labeling the order of these common operations in each of the sequence,

but takes into consideration the gap between each pair successive common operations in

the original sequences. This feature allows the Merger Coefficient to correctly measure

the similarity between operation sequences. Still using the example of the four operation

sequences discussed earlier, we can see that only the Merger Coefficient can identify the

right similarity relationships between sequence O1 and sequences O2, O3, and O4 (Table

4.1).

O2 O3 O4
(A, K) (A, J, B, C, D, E) (A, F, G, H, I, J)
1 4 4 Levenshtein Distance
Tams Dissimilarity
0.29 0.67 0.67 Coefficient
(wn=wc=0.5; ws=wd=wi=1)
O1
Ho et als Similarity
(A, J) 0.5 1 1
Coefficient
Askin and Zhous Similarity
0.5 1 1
Coefficient
0.5 0.94 0.61 Merger Coefficient

Table 4.1: Comparison of Merger Coefficient with other Distance/Similarity Measures

- 66 -
4.5. Cluster Analysis using Merger Coefficient

The purpose of comparison of operation sequences using similarity/distance

measures is to guide the cluster analysis of these operation sequences and accordingly

group similar ones. In this section, we will compare Merger Coefficient with other

similarity/distance measures on their effectiveness in cluster analysis.

The objective of cluster analysis is to group either the data units or the variables

into clusters such that the elements within a cluster have a high degree of natural

association among themselves while the clusters are relatively distinct from one

another (Anderberg, 1973). Normally, cluster analysis pursues one of the two directions

of forming clusters: Homogeneity and separation. Homogeneous cluster analysis

emphasizes on the similarity among the data units or the variables within the same

cluster, and separated cluster analysis focuses on that the data units or the variables

belonging to different clusters should differ from one another. In same cases, both of

them are taken into consideration.

According to Hansen and Jaumard (1997), there are five types of commonly used

clustering: Subset, partition, packing, covering and hierarchy. Given a sample of N

objects denoted by S = {Sn}, n = 1, 2, .., N, these five types of clustering can be described

as follows:

1) Subset B of S, B ;

2) Partition P = {Bi} of S into T clusters, i = 1, 2, .., T;

- 67 -
 where Bi Bj = i j;

=S;
i

3) Packing K = {Bi} of S with T clusters, i = 1, 2, .., T;

where Bi Bj = i j;

4) Covering C = {Bi} of S with T clusters, i = 1, 2, .., T;

where = S ;
i

5) Hierarchy H = {Pm} of M (M N) partitions of S, m = 1, 2, .., M;

where Bi Bj or Bi Bj = when Bi Pk, Bj Pl and k>l.

For cluster analysis of operation sequences, the most used type of clustering is the

homogeneous hierarchical clustering method. There are two major approaches to the

hierarchical clustering problem: Agglomerative and divisive. Agglomerative algorithms

start from a partition in N clusters, i.e. each object forming a cluster, and then

successively merge the clusters until all N objects belong to the same cluster. On the

contrary, divisive algorithms start from a cluster containing all N objects and then

successively bipartition one cluster at a time until each object belongs to a distinct

cluster. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms are more frequently used and

better explored than divisive ones. Hence, in our research, we use an agglomerative

hierarchical clustering method for homogeneous cluster analysis of operations sequences.

- 68 -
 At the first step of the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm, when each

object represents its own cluster, the similarity/distance between each pair of objects is

defined by the chosen similarity/distance measure. However, once several objects have

been linked together, the similarity/distances between those new clusters need to be

identified. In other words, we need a linkage rule to determine whether two clusters are

sufficiently similar to be linked together. For example, we could link two clusters

together when any two objects in the two clusters are closer together than the respective

linkage distance. In other words, the nearest neighbors" across clusters determine the

distances between clusters; this method is called Single Linkage. Contrarily, we may use

the farthest neighbors across clusters to determine the distances between clusters, i.e.

the distances between clusters are determined by the greatest distance between any two

objects in the different clusters. This method is called Complete Linkage. The single

linkage method is suitable for forming clusters that are expected to be chain-like, and the

complete linkage method tend to form clusters that are naturally distinct. In between

these two extremes, there are numerous other linkage rules such as those proposed by

Sneath and Sokal (1973):

Unweighted Pair-Group Average Linkage. In this method, the distance

between two clusters is calculated as the average distance between all pairs of

objects in the two different clusters. This method performs equally well in

forming both chain-like and naturally distinct clusters.

Weighted Pair-Group Average Linkage. This method is identical to the

unweighted pair-group average linkage method, except that in the

- 69 -
 computations, the size of the respective clusters (i.e., the number of objects

contained in the clusters) is used as a weight. Thus, this method is preferable

to the unweighted pair-group average linkage method when the cluster sizes

are expected to be greatly uneven.

Unweighted Pair-Group Centroid Linkage. The centroid of a cluster is the

average point in the multidimensional space defined by the dimensions. In a

sense, it is the center of gravity for the respective cluster. In this method, the

distance between two clusters is determined as the difference between

centroids.

Weighted Pair-Group Centroid Linkage. This method is identical to the

unweighted pair-group centroid linkage method, except that weighting is

introduced into the computations to take into consideration differences in

cluster sizes. Thus, this method is preferable to the unweighted pair-group

centroid linkage method when cluster sizes are expected to be considerably

different.

Ward (1963) proposed a linkage method that is totally distinct from all the above

linkage methods because it uses an analysis of variance approach to evaluate the

distances between clusters. In Ward's method, the distance between two clusters is

defined so that the sum of squares from the objects to the joint cluster mean minus the

sum of squares from the objects to their individual cluster means. This method is efficient

in forming clusters of small size.

- 70 -
 Based on the characteristics of these linkage methods, we choose the unweighted

pair-group average linkage algorithm, which is more suitable for general clustering, as

the linkage method in our homogeneous agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of

operation sequences. Detailed discussion of the cluster analysis method will be described

in next chapter. Here, we only show the results of the homogeneous agglomerative

hierarchical cluster analysis of a sample dataset based on different similarity/distance

measures, using the unweighted pair-group average linkage algorithm. From Table 4.1,

we can see that Levenshtein distance and Tams dissimilarity measure have similar

results, and so do Ho et als and Askin and Zhous similarity measures. Therefore, we

only choose Levenshtein distance and Askin and Zhous similarity coefficient to be

compared with Merger Coefficient on cluster analysis performance.

Given a sample of parts shown in Table 4.2, we calculate Levenshtein distance,

Askin and Zhous similarity coefficient and Merger Coefficient for each pair of parts as

shown in Tables 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 respectively. Now that Askin and Zhous coefficient and

Merger Coefficient are both similarity measures, for the convenience of comparison, a

Levenshtein distance di can be converted into its corresponding similarity coefficient si

using the following normalization formula:

di
si = 1
max d i
i

- 71 -
Accordingly, the Levenshtein distance matrix in Table 4.3 is converted into its

corresponding similarity coefficient matrix as shown in Table 4.6.

Based on the similarity coefficient matrices in Tables 4.6, 4.4 and 4.5, the

agglomerative hierarchical clusterings of the sample of parts are generated using average

linkage method as shown in Figures 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9 respectively. Figure 4.10 shows the

trend of the clustering threshold for each measure. It is observed that both Levenshtein

distance and Askin and Zhous similarity coefficient produce many ties during the

clustering procedure. This is because that these two measures often inappropriately assign

the same distance/similarity value to different pairs of operation sequences t, like the

results shown in Table 4.1. Ties may pose a serious problem in the clustering procedure

because they force the clustering algorithm to make arbitrary decisions on the order in

which clusters are merged (Coggins, 1983) A clustering method with too many arbitrary

mergers is inefficient and more likely generate incorrect clusters.

Therefore, it is concluded that Merger Coefficient is preferable to the other

distance/similarity measures in that it can correctly calculate the similarity/dissimilarity

between operations sequences, and is more efficient for cluster analysis by eliminating

unnecessary ties of clustering thresholds.

- 72 -
 Part # Operation Sequence
1 1,4,8,9
2 1,4,7,4,8,7
3 1,2,4,7,8,9
4 1,4,7,9
5 1,6,10,7,9
6 6,10,7,8,9
7 6,4,8,9
8 3,5,2,6,4,8,9
9 3,5,6,4,8,9
10 4,7,4,8
11 6
12 11,7,12
13 11,12
14 11,7,10
15 1,7,11,10,11,12
16 1,7,11,10,11,12
17 11,7,12
18 6,7,10
19 12

Table 4.2: Operation Sequences for the Sample of Parts

- 73 -
 Part # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
1 - 3 2 1 3 3 1 4 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 4 4 4
2 - 3 3 5 4 4 5 4 2 6 5 6 5 5 5 5 5 6
3 - 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 6 5 6 5 5 5 5 5 6
4 - 2 3 2 5 4 3 4 3 4 3 5 5 3 3 4
5 - 2 3 5 4 5 4 4 5 4 4 4 4 3 5
6 - 2 5 4 4 4 4 5 4 6 6 4 3 5
7 - 3 2 3 3 4 4 4 6 6 4 3 4
8 - 1 5 6 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 7
9 - 4 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 6
10 - 4 3 4 3 5 5 3 3 4
- 74 -

11 - 3 2 3 6 6 3 2 1
12 - 1 1 4 4 0 2 2
13 - 2 4 4 1 3 1
14 - 4 4 1 1 3
15 - 0 4 4 5
16 - 4 4 5
17 - 2 2
18 - 3
19 -

Table 4.3: Levenshtein Distances for the Sample of Parts

 Part # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
1 - 0.75 1 0.75 0.5 0.5 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.5 0 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0 0 0
2 - 0.67 0.75 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.33 0.33 1 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0
3 - 1 0.6 0.6 0.75 0.67 0.5 0.75 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0.33 0
4 - 0.75 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.5 0.5 0.33 0.33 0
5 - 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.25 1 0.33 0 0.33 0.4 0.4 0.33 0.67 0
6 - 0.75 0.6 0.6 0.5 1 0.33 0 0.33 0.2 0.2 0.33 0.67 0
7 - 1 1 0.5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.33 0
8 - 1 0.5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.33 0
9 - 0.5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.33 0
- 75 -

10 - 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.25 0.25 0.33 0.33 0

11 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
12 - 1 0.67 0.67 0.67 1 0.33 1
13 - 0.5 1 1 1 0 1
14 - 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0
15 - 1 0.67 0.67 1
16 - 0.67 0.67 1
17 - 0.33 1
18 - 0
19 -

Table 4.4: Askin and Zhous Similarity Coefficients for the Sample of Parts
 Part # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
1 - 0.67 0.92 0.75 0.46 0.50 0.75 0.74 0.74 0.50 0 0 0 0 0.24 0.24 0 0 0
2 - 0.64 0.74 0.40 0.37 0.49 0.33 0.33 0.99 0 0.31 0 0.31 0.33 0.33 0.31 0.31 0
3 - 0.92 0.57 0.60 0.70 0.64 0.50 0.74 0 0.31 0 0.31 0.33 0.33 0.31 0.31 0
4 - 0.71 0.46 0.50 0.49 0.49 0.50 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.49 0.49 0.33 0.33 0
5 - 0.80 0.50 0.39 0.40 0.25 0.92 0.32 0 0.32 0.40 0.40 0.32 0.65 0
6 - 0.71 0.59 0.60 0.50 0.92 0.32 0 0.32 0.20 0.20 0.32 0.65 0
7 - 0.99 0.99 0.50 0.94 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.33 0
8 - 0.97 0.49 0.88 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.31 0
9 - 0.49 0.90 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.31 0
10 - 0 0.33 0 0.33 0.24 0.24 0.33 0.33 0
11 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.96 0
- 76 -

12 - 0.92 0.67 0.65 0.65 1 0.33 0.96

13 - 0.49 0.96 0.96 0.92 0 0.98
14 - 0.65 0.65 0.67 0.67 0
15 - 1 0.65 0.60 0.90
16 - 0.65 0.60 0.90
17 - 0.33 0.96
18 - 0
19 -

Table 4.5: Merger Coefficients for the Sample of Parts

 Part # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
1 - 0.57 0.71 0.86 0.57 0.57 0.86 0.43 0.57 0.57 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.29 0.29 0.43 0.43 0.43
2 - 0.57 0.57 0.29 0.43 0.43 0.29 0.43 0.71 0.14 0.29 0.14 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.14
3 - 0.71 0.57 0.57 0.57 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.14 0.29 0.14 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.29 0.14
4 - 0.71 0.57 0.71 0.29 0.43 0.57 0.43 0.57 0.43 0.57 0.29 0.29 0.57 0.57 0.43
5 - 0.71 0.57 0.29 0.43 0.29 0.43 0.43 0.29 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.57 0.29
6 - 0.71 0.29 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.29 0.43 0.14 0.14 0.43 0.57 0.29
7 - 0.57 0.71 0.57 0.57 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.14 0.14 0.43 0.57 0.43
8 - 0.86 0.29 0.14 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.14 0.00
9 - 0.43 0.29 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.14 0.29 0.14
10 - 0.43 0.57 0.43 0.57 0.29 0.29 0.57 0.57 0.43
- 77 -

11 - 0.57 0.71 0.57 0.14 0.14 0.57 0.71 0.86

12 - 0.86 0.86 0.43 0.43 1.00 0.71 0.71
13 - 0.71 0.43 0.43 0.86 0.57 0.86
14 - 0.43 0.43 0.86 0.86 0.57
15 - 1.00 0.43 0.43 0.29
16 - 0.43 0.43 0.29
17 - 0.71 0.71
18 - 0.57
19 -

Table 4.6: Levenshtein Distance based Similarity Coefficients for the Sample of Parts
 Levenshein Distance based
Similarity Coefficient (%)
31.59

54.39

77.20
- 78 -

100.00
1 7 4 3 5 6 2 10 8 9 12 17 14 18 11 13 19 15 16

Part #

Figure 4.7: Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Levenshtein Distance
 Askin and Zhou's
Similarity Coefficient (%)
15.71

43.80

71.90
- 79 -

100.00
2 10 1 3 4 7 8 9 5 6 11 18 14 15 16 12 13 17 19

Part #

Figure 4.8: Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Askin and Zhous Similarity Coefficient
 Merger Coefficient (%)

15.18

43.45

71.72
- 80 -

100.00
2 10 1 3 4 5 6 11 18 7 9 8 12 17 13 19 15 16 14

Part #

Figure 4.9: Average Linkage Clustering of the Sample of Parts using Merger Coefficient
 Levenshtein Distance based Similarity Coeffcient
Askin and Zhou's Similarity Coefficient
Merger Coefficient

100
90
Threshold Value(%)

80
70
60
50
40
- 81 -

30
20
10
0
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
No. of Clusters

Figure 4.10: Threshold Trends of the Distance/Similarity Measures

 CHAPTER 5

DESIGN OF MODULAR LAYOUTS

A review of the literature shows that a fundamental requirement for the design of

modern facility layouts is the distribution of identical machines at multiple locations in

the facility. As early as 1952, Ireson (1952) recognized that a manufacturing facility

layout may need to have a combination of the product grouping and process

specialization characteristic of Cellular and Functional layouts, respectively. From a

historical perspective, the pioneering paper on Production Flow Analysis by Burbidge

(1963) was the first to specifically discuss machine duplication to divide and distribute

the departments in a Functional layout in order to design a Cellular layout. Holographic

layouts (Montreuil and Lefrancois, 1996) and Fractal layouts (Venkatadri, Rardin and

Montreuil, 1997) extend the idea of the traditional Functional layout since they distribute

identical machines at multiple locations on the factory floor. A related idea, that of giving

flexibility to a jobshop layout by distributing identical machines at several non-adjacent

locations on the shopfloor, is discussed in (Webster and Tyberghein, 1980). Hybrid

Cellular Layouts (Irani, 1990; Shukla, 1995) represent a fusion of several ideas of partial

conversion to a Cellular layout, functional grouping of several shared machine types,

- 82 -
limited physical duplication of shared machines and intercell flows. In one variation of

hybrid layouts, an existing layout is replaced by a combination of both manufacturing

cells and individual workcenters (Harhalakis et al, 1996). Cascading Cells (Tilsley et al,

1977) and Remainder Cells (Shunk and Reed, 1975) are other examples of hybrid

layouts. Holonic layouts (Askin et al, 1996) have random arrangements of machines with

no specific cell boundaries and distribute multiple machines of any type throughout the

facility.

However, the literature also indicates that the strategic duplication of machines in

the facility can be achieved only by using the operation sequences of the products as

input. If the operation sequences are aggregated and the resulting From-To chart used as

input, then at best a single type of layout Functional Layout can be designed for a

facility. Vakharia and Wemmerlov (1990) presented a method to design a set of

independent or interacting Flowline cells with minimum intercell flows. Askin and Zhou

(1998) proposed an enhanced algorithm to solve the same problem using Longest

Common Subsequences. Ho et al (1993) presented a layout design technique that exploits

the similarity of product assembly sequences in a product family to design a network-

type layout for a multi-product flowline. Moodie et al (1994) discussed the case of design

of a network of manufacturing cells using product sequence similarity analysis where all

cells have a flowline layout.

In this chapter, we will propose a novel idea design of any facility layout as a

network of layout modules. The idea of layout modules is equivalent to that of

directed graph primitives which originated during a feasibility study to design a cellular

- 83 -
layout for a semiconductor fab (Irani, 1997). Layout modules automatically group

machines that occur together in different operation sequences, allowing for the same

machines to be duplicated in several locations, depending on the placement of the

modules in the final layout. In essence, the layout module expands the ideas of cells in

a cellular layout and departments in a functional layout by allowing a module to have a

product, process or part family focus (Irani and Huang, 1998).

5.1. Layout Modules: A New Concept in Facility Layout

Experience from several machining and fabrication jobshop layout projects

undertaken in industry has shown that the traditional layouts are inadequate for layout

design. The overall material flow network corresponding to the operation sequences of

the products being produced by the facility may not be appropriately represented by any

one of the traditional layouts. Instead, our research asserts that the material flow network

in any facility layout can be decomposed into a network of layout modules, with each

module representing a portion of the entire facility. A layout module is essentially a

group of machines connected by a material flow network that exhibits certain flow

pattern characteristic of a specific type of layout, such as the Flowline or Functional

Layout. Layout modules are categorized as follows:

Flowline Module (Figure 5.1a): A Flowline module is a linear arrangement of

machines such that all inter-machine moves for consecutive pairs of

operations on any product moving through the line would be in-sequence

flows.

- 84 -
 Branched (Convergent/Divergent) Flowline Module (Figure 5.1b): A

Branched Flowline module results when a set of products have operation

sequences with one or more substrings of operations common to all of them.

At several points, the flowline will split into parallel branches, each branch

containing machines unique to a particular product (or products). These

branches will merge later into a single line wherever all product(s) require the

same substring of operations.

Patterned Flow Module (Figure 5.1c): The material flow network in a

Patterned Flow module exhibits a flow dominance and precedence hierarchy.

It is a directed cyclic graph of which each cycle is formed by two vertices.

This module could be further decomposed into a network of Flowline modules

and Branched Flowline modules.

Functional Layout Module (Figure 5.1d): A Functional Layout module is

analogous to the process-focused department in a traditional Functional layout

in which material flows are random. The random flows are due to the absence

of any flow dominance or patterns in the sequences in which the different

machines within the module are used by different parts.

The concept of layout modules extends current thinking on input data

requirements and methods for facility layout, and supports the need for a new generation

of facility layouts beyond the three traditional layouts that continue to be studied and

- 85 -
implemented in industry. Our research on layout modules could extend the state-of-the-

art in the theory and practice of facility layout techniques as follows:

The department in a facility is allowed to contain a combination of multiple

compatible processes, instead of a single process. Similarly, the formation of

a partial cell is allowed since the threshold values of operation sequence

similarity for grouping dissimilar products into families are subjective and

vary with each sample of product routings specific to a particular jobshop.

Facility planners are allowed to take a logical approach to duplicating

machines of the same function at multiple locations in a facility based on their

occurrence in different combinations of operations required for different

families of routings.

More than one type of layout can be used to arrange the different machines

and resources in a facility.

Design of Modular Layouts using operation sequences is a flexible method

that could also be used to design any facility layout.

An approach is proposed for defining the multi-function capabilities of

flexible automated machines by identifying strings of consecutive operations

common to a large number of similar products.

- 86 -
 C D

A B C D E A B G H

E F

(a) Flowline Module

(b) Branched Flowline Module

B D
B C D

C E
A E

(c) Patterned Flow Module

(d) Functional Layout Module

Figure 5.1: Illustration of Layout Modules

5.2. Problem Description for Designing A Modular Layout

A layout module is a group of machines with assigned flows. Let each machine be

a vertex and each flow be an edge, a layout module M can be represented by a directed

graph G(M). And when we treat each layout module as a vertex and each inter-module

flow as an edge, a modular layout can be represented by a directed graph G(L). For

discussion of the problem for designing a modular layout, the following concepts about

directed graphs are introduced first:

- 87 -
 Weakly Connected Graph: A directed graph is weakly connected if every pair of

vertices can reach each other by ignoring the direction

of edges.

Strongly Connected Graph: A directed graph is strongly connected if there is a

directed path between every pair of vertices.

Strongly Connected Components: A group of vertices in a directed graph are

called strongly connected components if there

is a directed path between every pair of vertices

in the group. The degree of the strongly

connected components is defined as the

number of vertices in the group.

Topological Sort (Linear Extension): Given a directed acyclic graph G = (V, E), a

topological sort or linear extension of G is a

linear ordering of the vertices of V such that

for each edge (i, j) E, vertex i is to the left

of vertex j.

The directed graphs corresponding to flowline and branched flowline modules are

directed acyclic graphs, therefore they have linear extensions. For a directed graph

corresponding to a patterned flow module, a linear extension can be constructed if each

- 88 -
group of strongly connected components is treated as a supernode. Since each supernode

contains only two vertices, the ordering of vertices remains linear and the flows have a

dominant left to right pattern with exception in each supernode. In terms of flow

dominance and degree of strongly connected components, the flow complexity of the

four types of layout module is shown in Table 5.1.

Flowline Branched Patterned Functional

Module Flowline Module Flow Module Layout Module
Dominant Flow
Yes Yes Yes None
Pattern
In-Sequence
Yes Yes Yes N/A
Flow
Bypass Flow None Yes Yes N/A
Backtracking
None None Yes N/A
Flow
Strongly
Yes. Highest Yes. Highest
Connected None None
degree is 2. degree 3.
Components

Table 5.1: Comparison of Flow Complexity for Layout Modules

The problem of designing a modular layout is a multi-criteria decision problem.

The objective is to simplify factory flows with consideration of machine purchasing

costs. Based on the above discussion, it is observed that number of groups of strongly

connected components contained in a directed graph and their degrees can be used to

measure flow complexity of the graph. The description of the problem is as follows:

- 89 -
Given

Production volume of each product in the planning period

Operation sequences for each product, in form of routing of

machines, and processing time for each operation

Unit purchasing cost and capacity of each type of machine

Current number of each type of machine

Determine

Number of layout modules, denoted by m

To which module each machine is allocated

To which machine each operation for each product is assigned

To Minimize

Machines purchasing cost

Highest degree of strongly connected components contained in

G(M
i =1
i )

Sum of degrees of strongly connected components contained in

G(M
i =1
i )

- 90 -
 Highest degree of strongly connected components contained in

G(L)

Sum of degrees of strongly connected components contained in

G(L)

Such that

Each operation is assigned to one and only one machine

Machine capacity constraints are satisfied

This problem consists of several NP-complete sub-problems. For example,

determining the size and number of each layout module that will comprise the new layout

is analogous to the Clustering, Capacitated Clustering, Graph Partitioning and Partition

into Cliques problems (Garey and Johnson, 1979; Mulvey and Beck, 1984). Given the

digraph connecting the set of machines assigned to a module, determining which type of

layout module it best represents is the Subgraph Isomorphism problem (Garey and

Johnson, 1979). For example, the simplest case where the population of routings is

clustered into K modules with the same configuration Flowline is analogous to the

Shortest Common Superstring problem. Having obtained a decomposition of the existing

facility into a network of modules, determining the optimal layout for this network is

analogous to the Quadratic Assignment problem or the Maximum Weight Planar

Subgraph problem of designing a block (or Functional) layout for a facility.

- 91 -
5.3. A Heuristic Procedure for Generation of Layout Modules

In this section, we present a heuristic procedure for solving the problem for design

of a modular layout based on production flow analysis and group technology. The

proposed approach is a hybrid method that integrates the methods for design of

Functional and Cellular layouts. The underlying algorithms are based on group

technology for machine grouping and similarity analysis of product routings, and the

string matching methods used extensively in genetics, molecular chemistry and the

biological sciences (Sankoff and Kruskal, 1983). The heuristic procedure developed to

generate layout modules is described below. The sample of data studied by Irani and

Ramakrishnan (1995), shown in Table 5.2, is used to demonstrate the method.

Stage 1: Identification of common_substrings, if any, between all pairs of

operation sequences. A layout module is a essentially a group of machines connected by

a material flow network that exhibits a flow pattern characteristic of a specific type of

layout, and thus could have a product, process or part family focus. A part may go

through multiple layout modules with each module processing a subset of operations for

the part. In other words, a layout module is responsible for a set of similar partial routings

of parts. Hence, naturally, we start constructing layout modules with capturing partial

routings that are common among parts, i.e. the common substrings among operation

sequences. A common substring is defined as a sequence of consecutive operations that is

common to two or more operation sequences. These operation sequences, in turn, are the

- 92 -
superstrings of the substring. In each superstring, an operation that does not belong to the

common substring is called a residual operation with respect to the common substring.

Part # Sequence Total Time (minutes/unit)

1 1,4,8,9 96-36-36-72
2 1,4,7,4,8,7 36-120-20-120-24-20
3 1,2,4,7,8,9 96-48-36-120-36-72
4 1,4,7,9 96-36-120-72
5 1,6,10,7,9 96-72-200-120-72
6 6,10,7,8,9 36-120-60-24-36
7 6,4,8,9 72-36-48-48
8 3,5,2,6,4,8,9 144-120-48-72-36-48-48
9 3,5,6,4,8,9 144-120-72-36-48-48
10 4,7,4,8 120-20-120-24
11 6 72
12 11,7,12 192-150-80
13 11,12 192-60
14 11,7,10 288-180-360
15 1,7,11,10,11,12 15-70-54-45-54-30
16 1,7,11,10,11,12 15-70-54-45-54-30
17 11,7,12 192-150-80
18 6,7,10 108-180-360
19 12 60

Table 5.2: Operation Sequences for the Sample of Parts

The common substrings of operations in a set of n operation sequences can be

identified in linear time using a suffix tree. First, construct a suffix tree that contains the n

operation sequences, with each leaf labeled with its original operation sequence. Then,

the common substrings of operations can be identified using a depth-first search on this

suffix tree with labeling each node with both the length of its common prefix and the

- 93 -
number of distinct operation sequences that are its children. The algorithm for finding

common substrings between two operation sequences is shown in Figure 5.2.

Using the algorithm described in Figure 5.2, the common substrings between each

pair of operation sequences in Table 5.2 are found, as shown in Table 5.3. Then we need

to identify each unique common substring, and calculate how frequent it occurs in the

original routings, i.e. the number of original routings which are the superstrings of the

common substring. It is observed that, among the all the common substrings in Table

5.3, there are 17 unique ones. The 17 unique common substrings and their frequencies of

occurrence in the original routings are listed in Table 5.4.

- 94 -
 i=1, j=1, len=0;

N N
len>1? x i = y j ?

Y Y

O U T PU T i=i+1, j=j+1, i=i+1, j=1,

C om _Substr len=len+1; len=0;

N N
N Y Y O U T PU T
j=j+1, len=0; i>m ? j>n? len>1?
C om _Substr
Y
- 95 -

Y O U T PU T
len>1?
C om _Substr
N

End

X i: The i th operation in sequence X .

Y j: The j th operation in sequence Y .
len: N um ber of m atching consecutive operations in sequences X and Y .
C om _substr: Sequence of m atching consecutive operations in sequences X and Y .

Figure 5.2: Algorithm for Finding Common_Substrings in Two Operation Sequences

 Part# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 161718 19
1 -
2 {1,4}, -
{4,8}
3 {8,9} {4,7} -
4 {1,4} {1,4,7} {4,7} -
5 {7,9} -
6 {8,9} {7,8,9} {6,10,7} -
7 {4,8,9} {4,8} {8,9} {8,9} -
8 {4,8,9} {4,8} {8,9} {8,9}{6,4,8,9} -
9 {4,8,9} {4,8} {8,9} {8,9}{6,4,8,9} {3,5}, -
{6,4,8,9}
- 96 -

10 {4,8} {4,7,4,8} {4,7} {4,7} {4,8} {4,8} {4,8} -

11 -
12 -
13 -
14 {11,7} -
15 {11,12} -
16 {11,12} {1,7,11,10,11,12} -
17 {11,7,12} {11,7} -
18 {7,10} -
19 -

Table 5.3: Common Substrings between all Pairs of Operation Sequences

 No. Unique Common Substring Frequency of Occurrence
S1 14 3
S2 147 2
S3 1 7 11 10 11 12 2
S4 35 2
S5 47 4
S6 4748 2
S7 48 6
S8 489 4
S9 6489 3
S10 6 10 7 2
S11 789 2
S12 79 2
S13 7 10 2
S14 89 6
S15 11 7 3
S16 11 7 12 2
S17 11 12 3

Table 5.4: Unique Common Substrings

Stage 2: Cluster analysis of dominant common substrings to generate basic layout

modules. Based on the definition of the layout modules, the relationship between

common substrings and each type of layout modules can be described as follows:

1) Flowline module: A Flowline module consists of a group of common

substrings in which there is one substring that is the superstring of all the

other substrings.

2) Branched Flowline module: When two or more common substrings have

common sub-substrings and no common residual operations with respect to

- 97 -
 the common sub-substrings, then the set of common substrings can be

merged into a Branched Flowline module by placing the common sub-

substrings in a single main flowline and creating parallel branches for the

residual operations.

3) Patterned Flow module: A Patterned Flow module also have common sub-

substrings, but the residual operations of the substrings with respect to the

common sub-substrings have common operations and the aggregated Travel

Chart digraph obtained from the merger of the substrings is a directed cyclic

graph of which each cycle is formed by two vertices.

4) Functional Layout module: A Functional Layout module is the same as a

Patterned Flow Layout module, except that the aggregated Travel Chart

digraph obtained from the merger of the substrings contains directed cycle

that is formed by more than two vertices. If the similarity coefficients

computed for these substrings exhibits poor clusterability, then a Functional

Layout module would appear suitable for those operations. Alternatively, if

these substrings are aggregated into a Travel Chart digraph which either

exhibits strong connectivity or contains a large number of cycles, then this

absence of flow patterns would again suggest a Functional Layout module.

- 98 -
 Since Flowline, Branched Flowline and Patterned Flowline modules all have

preferable structure of dominant flow pattern, we define these three modules as basic

layout modules. The objective of this stage is to form basic layout modules using

dominant common substrings. Dominant common substrings are those common

substrings whose frequencies of occurrence in the original routings are higher than a user

defined threshold DOM.

Next, cluster analysis of dominant common substrings needs to be performed to

group similar substrings and generate basic layout modules. As discussed in chapter 5,

we use Merger coefficient to calculate the similarity between each pair of dominant

common substrings, and adopt the homogeneous agglomerative hierarchical clustering

method with the (unweighted pair-group) average linkage algorithm for cluster analysis.

Following Mulvey and Crowder (1979), the mathematical model for homogeneous

clustering of dominant common substrings to form basic layout modules is given as

follows:

- 99 -
 (P) Minimize m
I J
ij xij

Subject to: x
J
ij = 1 , for all i

x J
jj =K

xij x jj , for all i, j

xij binary, for all i, j

where

I = Set of substrings

J = Set of eligible medians

K = Number of clusters

mij = Merger coefficient between substrings i and j

xij =1 if substring i is assigned to cluster median j;

= 0 otherwise.

Given T as the number of all operation types and N as the number of common

substrings, a common substring can be represented by a TT matrix A where

- 100 -
 1 if there is a flow from operation i to operation j
A[i,j] =
0 otherwise

Representing each substring by a TT matrix Ak (k=1, , N), the merger of two or more

substrings can then be represented by the matrix A

k
k
, where

a > 0 if there is a flow from operation i to operation j

( Ak )[i,j ] =
k 0 otherwise

The agglomerative hierarchical heuristic for solving problem (P) is described below:

(1) Let each substring Ak be a cluster, which will result in the set of clusters

C={Ck}={Ak}, k=1, , N.

(2) Find all strongly connected components consisting of more than two operations, if

any, contained in each substring Ak (k=1, , N) and store them in a corresponding

set of strongly connected component Sk. The strongly connected components in

Sk are allowed to occur in a basic layout module generated from Ak.

(3) Do until no clusters can be merged:

Step 1: Mark every pair of clusters as untested.

Step 2: Calculate similarity for each pair of clusters using the average linkage

method.

Step 3: From the untested clusters, select the pair Ck1 and Ck2 that has the highest

similarity.

Step 4: Test mergeability of Ck1 and Ck2.

- 101 -
 If (Ck1+Ck2) contains strongly connected components that consist of more

than two operations and do not belong to (Sk1 Sk2), or

(Ck1+Ck2) is not weakly connected, then Ck1 and Ck2 are not

mergeable, go to Step 3.

Else, Ck1 and Ck2 are mergeable; replace Ck1 and Ck2 by (Ck1+Ck2) in

cluster set C with (Sk1 Sk2) as its corresponding strongly

connected component set; mark (Ck1+Ck2) as untested; go to Step

2.

(4) Output each of the clusters in C as a basic layout module.

In the above procedure, the strongly connected components are found using the

depth first search proposed by Tarjan (1972). The basic idea in his algorithm is to study

where the nodes of the strong components are located in the depth first spanning forest of

the graph. The nodes of every strong components form a tree in the spanning forest. To

identify the strong components, the root of each component needs to be labeled first. The

root of each component is the node in the component having the lowest number in the

depth first order in the spanning forest. When the roots are identified, the nodes in a

component are obtained as those descendants of its root that are not descendants of any

other component root that is a descendant of its root.

- 102 -
 In our example, we define all the unique common substrings as the dominant

common substrings, i.e. DOM = 1. The similarity between each pair of the dominant

common substrings measured by Merger coefficient is shown in Table 5.5.

- 103 -
 DCS S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17
S1 - 0.99 0.44 0 0.50 0.47 0.50 0.49 0.47 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
S2 - 0.64 0 0.99 0.66 0.49 0.33 0.32 0.33 0.33 0.49 0.49 0 0.49 0.33 0
S3 - 0 0.44 0.24 0 0 0 0.31 0.31 0.44 0.86 0 0.44 0.64 0.94
S4 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
S5 - 0.97 0.50 0.49 0.47 0.49 0.49 0.50 0.50 0 0.50 0.49 0
S6 - 0.97 0.66 0.50 0.32 0.60 0.47 0.47 0.47 0.47 0.32 0
S7 - 0.99 0.97 0 0.49 0 0 0.50 0 0 0
S8 - 0.99 0 0.67 0.49 0 0.99 0 0 0
- 0.32 0.66 0.47 0 0.97 0 0 0
- 104 -

S9
S10 - 0.33 0.49 0.49 0 0.49 0.33 0
S11 - 0.90 0.49 0.99 0.49 0.33 0
S12 - 0.50 0.50 0.50 0.49 0
S13 - 0 0.50 0.49 0
S14 - 0 0 0
S15 - 0.99 0.50
S16 - 0.90
S17 -

Table 5.5: Merger Coefficients for All Pairs of Dominant Common Substrings (DCS)
 Merger Coefficient (%)

0.00

33.33 M1
M4
M2 M3
- 105 -

66.67

100.00
S4 S3 S1
7
S1
5
S1
6
S1
0
S1
2
S1
3 S1 S2 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S1
1
S1
4

Dominant Common Substring

Figure 5.3: Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering of Dominant Common Substrings

 Based on Merger coefficients for all pairs of dominant common substrings, a

cluster analysis of these substrings is performed using the proposed heuristic method.

Figure 5.3 shows the dendrogram for the agglomerative hierarchical clustering of the

substrings. Consequently, four basic layout modules are generated as shown in Table 5.6.

Cluster of Dominant
Module # Digraph for the Layout Module
Common_Substrings
M1 S4 35
S3, S15, S16, S17
1 7 11 10
M2
12
S10, S12, S13
M3 6 10 7 9
S1, S2, S5, S6, S7, S8, S9, 1
S11, S14
6 4 8 9
M4

Table 5.6: Basic Layout Modules

Stage 3: Generation of Functional Layout modules if necessary. If two layout

modules have many common machines, they may be merged into a Function Layout

module to reduce machine duplication. The commonality between layout modules Mi and

- 106 -
 nij
Mj is defined as , where nij is the number of distinct operations common to
min(ni , n j )

both modules; ni and nj are the number of distinct operations contained in Mi and Mj,

respectively. Given a user-defined threshold level of commonality V (0V1) for merging

layout modules, the algorithm for merging layout modules is presented as follows:

(1) Calculate the commonality between each pair of layout modules.

(2) Find the pair of layout modules with highest commonality. If the

commonality is higher than the threshold level V, then aggregate the

two modules into one, go to (1); else, stop.

The selection of the threshold level V is a specific decision problem that requires the user

to perform the classical tradeoff between inter-module material flow costs and machine

duplication among the modules to eliminate the flows (Arvindh and Irani, 1994).

In our example, we set V=0.8. The Calculation of the commonality between each

pair of basic layout modules (Table 5.7) shows that there is no need to merge basic layout

modules.

Module # M1 M2 M3 M4
M1 -
M2 0 -
M3 0 0.5 -
M4 0 0.4 0.75 -

Table 5.7: Commonalities between Basic Layout Modules

- 107 -
 Stage 4: Expression of the original operation sequences in terms of the layout

modules. In this stage, we replace the original part routings by the combination of

residual machines and the layout modules generated using the above procedure.

Given an operation sequence (x1, x2, , xm) and layout modules M1,,Mn, the

procedure is implemented by a greedy heuristic method described as below:

(1) Set i=1; create a null operation sequence as the new sequence.

(2) If i m, find the layout module Mj which contains the longest

substring that matches (xi, xi+1, , xk), where k m; else, go to (4).

(3) If k 1, then put xi as a residual machine at the end of the new

sequence, i = i+1, go to (2); else, put Mj at the end of the new

sequence, i = k+1, go to (2).

(4) Output the new sequence as a modular sequence corresponding to the

original operation sequence.

The above method is applied to the original routings in Table 5.2 using the

module layouts in Table 5.6. The resulting modular sequences are listed in Table 5.8.

- 108 -
 Part# Operation Sequences
1 M4
2 M4 7
3 M4 2 M4
4 M4 9
5 M4 M3
6 M3 M4
7 M4
8 M1 2 M4
9 M1 M4
10 M4
11 M4
12 M2
13 M2
14 M2 10
15 M2
16 M2
17 M2
18 6 M3
19 12

Table 5.8: Modular Sequences for the Sample of Parts

To reduce machine duplication, the modular sequences are adjusted such that any

residual machine occurring in an adjacent layout module is absorbed into the module.

This absorption of the residual machine may cause new strongly connected components

to occur in the layout module into which the machine was absorbed, and thus destroy the

Flowline, Branched Flowline or Patterned Flow pattern in that module. In other words, a

basic layout module may become a Functional Layout module after the adjustment.

- 109 -
 The adjustment of the basic layout modules, after the absorptions of residual

machines in the modular sequences, is shown in Table 5.9. Consequently, the new

modular sequences in terms of the adjusted layout modules are obtained as shown in

Table 5.10.

Module # Before Adjustment After Adjustment

M1 35 35
10

1 7 11 10
M2 1 7 11
12

12

6 7 9
6 10 7 9
M3
10

1
6 4 8
6 4 8 9
M4
1 7 9
7

Table 5.9: Adjustment of Layout Modules

- 110 -
 Part# Operation Sequences
1 M4
2 M4
3 M4 2 M4
4 M4
5 M4 M3
6 M3 M4
7 M4
8 M1 2 M4
9 M1 M4
10 M4
11 M4
12 M2
13 M2
14 M2
15 M2
16 M2
17 M2
18 M3
19 M2

Table 5.10: Adjusted Modular Sequences for the Sample of Parts

Stage 5: Generation of facility layout as a Network of Layout Modules. Based on

the adjusted modular sequences, a digraph representation between layout modules and

residual machines in the facility layout are generated. If one or more layout modules

and/or residual machines exhibit no flow from/to other modules and machines, then they

could be merged into a Cell module. Figure 5.4 shows the network representation of the

facility layout based on the adjusted modular sequences of the sample of parts.

- 111 -
 M4
9
M3
10 7 8

9 7 6 1 4 6

10
2 5 3
M1
M2 11 7 1

12

Inter-module flow or flow between a module and a residual machine

Intra-module flow

Figure 5.4: Flow Diagram for the Modular Layout

In order to determine the feasibility of duplicating machines in several modules,

the total available capacity per machine of each type for the entire production period need

to be computed:

A j = U j C

where,

Aj Total available capacity per machine of type j

Uj Utilization factor of machine type j

C Duration of production period

- 112 -
Then the numbers of machines required in a module are calculated as follows:

Tijk
N jk =
i Aj

where,

Njk Number of machines of type j required in module k

Tijk Capacity requirement for operation i on machine type j in module k

In our example, we set U=80% and C=8 hours, whereby A=384 minutes. Table

5.11 shows the number of machines of each type required in the layout modules and as

residual machines. Note that the integer requirements of machines 1, 9 and 10 summed

over all the modules exceed the available numbers of machines of each type. This is an

easy problem to solve if extra machines of these types can be purchased for the modules

(or some machines in the modules can be partially replaced by multi-function machines).

Alternatively, to minimize the duplication of identical machines in multiple locations,

inter-module flows can be encouraged by designing a layout that minimizes the travel

delays for these moves.

- 113 -
 Module Residual # of Existing
M1 M2 M3 M4
Machine Machine Machines
1 0 0.08* 0 1.09* 0 2
2 0 0 0 0 0.25 1
3 0.75 0 0 0 0 1
4 0 0 0 1.81 0 2
5 0.63 0 0 0 0 1
6 0 0 0.56 0.75 0 2
7 0 1.61 0.94 0.78 0 4
8 0 0 0 0.75 0 1
9 0 0 0.19* 1.03* 0 2
10 0 1.17* 1.77 0 0 3
11 0 2.81 0 0 0 3
12 0 0.89 0 0 0 1
* Low machine load may not justify putting a machine of this type in the module, instead

it may implies purchase of a multi-function flexible machine for the module.

Table 5.11: Machine Requirements in Layout Modules and as Residual Machines

After machine capacities are calculated, a block layout can be generated using the

maximum weight planar graph embedding heuristic proposed by Foulds and Giffin

(1985). In the final layout, some process departments are automatically split and their

machines are located at non-adjacent locations; some machines are shared by two

adjacent modules due to limited machine availability. If adjacent modules in the final

layout have a high commonality of machines, then they could be aggregated into a larger

module. The block layout for the sample of parts (Figure 5.5), based on Figure 5.4 and

Table 5.11, is generated using Foulds and Giffins method.

- 114 -
 M3 M4
9 9

10 7 8
7
10
4

4
6 1 6

10 7 1
2 5 3

10 7 12 M1
M2

11 11 11

Inter-module flow or flow between a module and an individual machine

Intra-module flow

n Machines shared by adjacent modules due to limited machine availability

Figure 5.5: Modular Layout for the Sample of Parts

5.4. Comparison of Alternative Layouts

In this section, we compare modular layout with functional layout and cellular

layout using the sample of parts used in the previous section. Based on the routings in

Table 5.2, the functional layout (Figure 5.6) is created by STORM, and the cellular layout

(Figure 5.7) is generated using Askin and Zhous method (1998).

- 115 -
 For the three layouts shown in Figures 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7, we compute the number

of moves in the routing of every product that occur between non-adjacent departments in

each layout, as shown in Table 5.12. This gives us an indication of the complexity of

material handling and also the extent to which the initial material flow graph could be

given a planar embedding. Furthermore, we also calculate the average number of

machines per machine group, additional machine requirements and the occurrences of

each type of machine in non-adjacent locations in each layout, as shown in Tables 5.13.

This measures the production flexibility and machine utilization in the layouts.

11 10 7 7

12 11 10 7 7 4

11 10 9 8 4

9 6 1

3 5 6 1

Figure 5.6: Functional Layout for the Sample of Parts

- 116 -
 1 2 4 7 4 8 7 9 Cell 1

1 3 5 2 6 6 10 7 4 8 9 10 Cell2

1 7 11 10 11 11 7 12 10 Cell3

Figure 5.7: Flowline Cellular Layout for the Sample of Parts

Flows between Non-adjacent Departments

Part # Modular Flowline Cellular
Functional Layout
Layout Layout
1 None None None
2 None None None
3 2 4 None None
4 None None None
5 6 10 None None
6 610 None None
7 6 4 None None
8 5 2 6 4 None None
9 6 4 None None
10 None None None
11 None None None
12 11 7 12 None None
13 11 7 None None
14 11 7 None None
15 7 11 None None
16 7 11 None None
17 11 7 12 None None
18 6 10 None None
19 None None None
Total 17 0 0

Table 5.12: Comparison of the Alternative Layouts on Flow Complexity

- 117 -
 Machine # Number of Occurrences in Non-adjacent Locations
Functional Layout Modular Layout Flowline Cellular Layout
1 1 2 3
2 1 1 2
3 1 1 1
4 1 1 3
5 1 1 1
6 1 2 1
7 1 3 5
8 1 1 2
9 1 2 2
10 1 2 4
11 1 1 2
12 1 1 1
Total 12 18 27
Average
1.92 per
Number of 4.8 per module 9.67 per cell
department
Machines
Additional
Machine 0 1 6
Requirements

Table 5.13: Comparison of the Alternative Layouts on Flexibility

From the measures shown in Tables 5.12 and 5.13, it is observed that the modular

layout consistently outperforms the cellular layout, and has much simpler production

flow than the functional layout with very subtle sacrifice on production flexibility and

machine utilization.

- 118 -
5.5. Case Study

In this section, we use the proposed heuristic method to generate a modular layout

for a local sheet metal fabrication jobshop. The routings of the parts are listed in Table

5.14.

Routing # Operation Sequence

1 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
2 1,2,3,11,4,8,10
3 12,2,13,3,2,9,10
4 12,2,6,3,10
5 12,6,2,3,2,4,10
6 1,2,8,9,2,4,10
7 2,3,5,4,6,7,6,7,10
8 2,3,5,4,6,10
9 1,2,14,4,5,6,9,10
10 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10
11 12,2,3,9,10
12 1,2,13,3,6,5,9,10
13 1,2,3,5,4,8,6,8,10
14 12,2,3,5,6,2,10
15 1,2,3,4,5,8,6,5,7,10
16 12,2,3,10
17 1,2,3,5,6,10
18 12,2,3,5,6,9,10
19 12,2,3,8,10
20 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,5,10
21 1,2,5,6,4,9,10
22 12,2,10
23 12,2,3,5,4,6,9,10

Table 5.14: Routings of Parts

- 119 -
 First, we find all the unique common substrings between all pairs of routings.

Since this dataset is small, we set the occurrence frequency threshold DOM = 1. At the

same time, without loss of any important flow information, we only choose representative

common substrings to be the dominant substrings. In other words, we remove the

substrings that are subsequence of one of the other substrings. The chosen dominant

common substrings are shown in Table 5.15. Then the Merger coefficients for all pairs of

dominant common substrings are computed as shown in Table 5.16. Figure 5.8 shows the

dendrogram for agglomerative hierarchical clustering of the dominant common

substrings with the unweighted pair-group average linkage method, based on the Merger

Coefficients in Table 5.16.

No. Common-Substrings
S1 8,9
S2 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
S3 4,8
S4 8,10
S5 3,2
S6 2,13,3
S7 3,10
S8 2,4,10
S9 6,2
S10 2,3,5,4,6
S11 6,7,10
S12 6,10
S13 5,6,9,10
S14 6,5
S15 8,6
S16 1,2,3,5
S17 12,2,3,5,6
S18 2,10

Table 5.15: Dominant Common Substrings

- 120 -
 DCS S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17 S18
S1 - 0 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.4 0 0.5 0 0 0
S2 - 0.4 0 0.4 0.6 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.7 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.9 0.7 0.4
S3 - 0.5 0 0 0 0.4 0 0.4 0 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 0
S4 - 0 0 0.5 0.4 0 0 0.4 0.5 0.4 0 0.5 0 0 0.5
S5 - 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.4 0 0 0 0 0 0.4 0.4 0.5
S6 - 0.4 0.3 0.4 0.6 0 0 0 0 0 0.6 0.6 0.4
S7 - 0.4 0 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.4 0 0 0.4 0.4 0.5
S8 - 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.4 0.3 0 0 0.3 0.3 0.9
S9 - 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.5
- 121 -

S10 - 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.8 0.4

S11 - 0.9 0.6 0.4 0.4 0 0.3 0.4
S12 - 0.9 0.5 0.5 0 0.4 0.5
S13 - 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.5 0.4
S14 - 0.5 0.4 0.4 0
S15 - 0 0.4 0
S16 - 0.7 0.4
S17 - 0.4
S18 -

Table 5.16: Merger Coefficients for All Pairs of Dominant Common Substrings (DCS)
 Merger Coefficient (%)

14.11

42.74 M3 M4
M2

M1
- 122 -

71.37

100.00
S2 S1
6
S1
0
S1
7 S6 S5 S7 S8 S1
8
S1
1
S1
2
S1
3 S9 S1
4
S1
5 S1 S3 S4

Dominant Common Substring

Figure 5.8: Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering of Dominant Common Substrings

 Based on the cluster analysis, four basic layout modules are generated as shown in

Table 5.17. We set the commonality threshold V = 0.7, and compute the commonality

between each pair of basic layout modules. It is observed that, from the commonality

matrix (Table 5.18), the commonality between M1 and M2, and that between M3 and M4

are both 0.75 > V. Therefore, M1 and M2 are merged into a new layout module M5,

while M3 and M4 are replaced by M6, as shown in Table 5.19.

Using these two layout modules, the original routings of parts are re-expressed by

modular sequences, as shown in Table 5.20. After checking the residual machines in the

modular sequences, it is observed that some residual machines can be absorbed into M5

while M6 needs no adjustment. The adjusted layout module M5 after absorption of

residual machines is shown in Figure 5.9. The adjusted modular sequences for the parts

are shown in Table 5.21. Consequently, the flow diagram for the modular layout is drawn

as shown in Figure 5.10.

- 123 -
 Module Cluster of Dominant
Digraph for the Layout Module
# Common Substrings

2 13 3 4 5 6 7
M1 S2, S16, S10, S17, S6
12

M2 S5, S7, S8, S18 3 2 4 10

- 124 -

S9, S11, S12, S13, S14, S15 8 6 7 10

M3
5 2

M4 S1, S3, S4 4 8
10

Table 5.17: Basic Layout Modules

 Module # M1 M2 M3 M4
M1 -
M2 0.75 -
M3 0.57 0.5 -
M4 0.25 0.5 0.75 -

Table 5.18: Commonalities among Basic Layout Modules

Module # Digraph for the Layout Module

1 2 10 6 7
M5 = M1 + M2
12 13 3 4 5

9
M6 = M3 + M4 4 8 6 7 10
5 2

Table 5.19: Merger of Basic Layout Modules

- 125 -
Routing # Operation Sequence Module Sequence
1 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),(8,9,10) M5 M6
2 (1,2,3),11,(4,8,10) M5 11 M6
3 (12,2,13,3,2),(9,10) M5 M6
4 (12,2),6,(3,10) M5 6 M5
5 12,(6,2),(3,2,4,10) 12 M6 M5
6 (1,2),(8,9),(2,4,10) M5 M6 M5
7 (2,3,5,4,6,7),(6,7,10) M5 M6
8 (2,3,5,4,6),10 M5 10
9 (1,2),14,(4,5),(6,9,10) M5 14 M5 M6
10 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),10 M5 10
11 (12,2,3),(9,10) M5 M6
12 (1,2,13,3),(6,5),(9,10) M5 M6 M6
13 (1,2,3,5,4),(8,6),(8,10) M5 M6 M6
14 (12,2,3,5,6),(2,10) M5 M5
15 (1,2,3,4,5),(8,6,5),(7,10) M5 M6 M6
16 (1,2,3,4,5),(8,6,5),(7,10) M5 M6 M6
17 (12,2,3),10 M5
18 (1,2,3,5,6),10 M5 10
19 (12,2,3,5,6),(9,10) M5 M6
20 (12,2,3),(8,10) M5 M6
21 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),5,10 M5 5 10
22 (1,2),(5,6),4,(9,10) M5 M5 4 M6
23 (12,2),10 M5
24 (12,2,3),10 M5
25 (12,2,3,5,4,6),(9,10) M5 M6

Table 5.20: Modular Sequences for the Parts

1 2 10 6 7

12 13 3 4 5

Figure 5.9: Layout Module M5 after Absorption of Residual Machines

- 126 -
Routing # Operation Sequence Module Sequence
1 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),(8,9,10) M5 M6
2 (1,2,3),11,(4,8,10) M5 11 M6
3 (12,2,13,3,2),(9,10) M5 M6
4 (12,2),6,(3,10) M5
5 12,(6,2),(3,2,4,10) 12 M6 M5
6 (1,2),(8,9),(2,4,10) M5 M6 M5
7 (2,3,5,4,6,7),(6,7,10) M5 M6
8 (2,3,5,4,6),10 M5
9 (1,2),14,(4,5),(6,9,10) M5 14 M5 M6
10 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),10 M5
11 (12,2,3),(9,10) M5 M6
12 (1,2,13,3),(6,5),(9,10) M5 M6 M6
13 (1,2,3,5,4),(8,6),(8,10) M5 M6 M6
14 (12,2,3,5,6),(2,10) M5 M5
15 (1,2,3,4,5),(8,6,5),(7,10) M5 M6 M6
16 (1,2,3,4,5),(8,6,5),(7,10) M5 M6 M6
17 (12,2,3),10 M5
18 (1,2,3,5,6),10 M5
19 (12,2,3,5,6),(9,10) M5 M6
20 (12,2,3),(8,10) M5 M6
21 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7),5,10 M5
22 (1,2),(5,6),4,(9,10) M5 M5 M6
23 (12,2),10 M5
24 (12,2,3),10 M5
25 (12,2,3,5,4,6),(9,10) M5 M6

Table 5.21: Adjusted Modular Sequences for the Parts

- 127 -
 1 2 10 6 7
14 M5
12 13 3 4 5

11

9
12 4 8 6 7 10 M6

5 2

Figure 5.10: Flow Diagram for the Modular Layout

- 128 -
 CHAPTER 6

DESIGN OF FLEXIBLE MACHINING MODULES USING LAYOUT MODULES

Facility layout and flexible automation are two approaches for reduction of

material handling costs and space requirements in a machining facility that have always

been implemented independently of each other. An informal industry survey was

conducted to determine whether multi-product machining jobshops linked their capital

investments in flexible automation with those for facility re-layout, or expansion. The

survey revealed that concepts such as Flexible Machining Modules (FMM), Flexible

Machining Cells (FMC), Cellular Layout, Setup Reduction, Lean Manufacturing, etc.

have been adopted. However, no systematic design strategy links investment in flexible

automation to material flow simplification and optimal layout of a facility. In addition,

the existing research literature on facility design methodology does not integrate the

grouping of parts and machines for the design of machining cells with the selection of

FMMs whose multi-functional capabilities could reduce the number of individual

machining workcenters in the facility. In this section, we describe a method for design of

compact machining facilities by using FMMs to replace sets of conventional machines

that are strongly linked by material flows, based on the concept of layout modules.

- 129 -
6.1. Facility Compaction by An FMS

A Flexible Machining System (FMS) consists of several FMMs that provide the

same variety of machining functions as the equivalent system of conventional machine

tools that it could replace. The FMS is able to provide these capabilities using a smaller

number of FMMs because it can operate untended, eliminate secondary operations that

necessitate material handling between machines, reduce setup times and eliminate

multiple setups. Table 6.1 lists actual examples of the compaction and reduction in size

of machining facilities after the introduction of FMS from 50 to 6 (Kawasaki Plant of

Toshiba Tungaloy), 42 to 35 (Brother Industry Co.), 31 to 6 (Nigata Internal Combustion

Plant of Nigata Iron Works Co.) and 68 to 18 (Yamazaki Machinery Works Ltd.).

Examples of FMMs are the LM-70 AT turning center, a multi-function machine that

machined parts in a single setup (Ito, 1982), the two machining centers in the Citroen

FMS that performed milling, drilling, boring, spot-facing, reaming and tapping on

dissimilar parts, such as cylinder heads, gearbox casings and differential housings

(Powley, 1983), the 5-axis machining center in Figure 6.1 and the 9-axis turning center in

Figure 6.2.

- 130 -
Table 6.1: Examples of Facility Compaction by an FMS (Iwata, 1984)

- 131 -
Figure 6.1: Five-Axis Machining Center with Tilting Contouring Spindle (Wick, 1987)

Figure 6.2: Four-Axis Turning Center Combined with a Five-Axis Machining Head for
Nine-Axis Machining (Wick, 1987)

- 132 -
6.2. Impact of Flexible Machining Modules on Product Throughput Times

If several machining functions are combined in a single FMM, then the delays in

product throughput time due to (a) loading/unloading, setup, toolchanging and inspection

at each operation, (b) material handling between consecutive operations and (c) queuing

delays at each operation could be reduced or eliminated. A study by Leonard (1975)

showed that conventional machine tools spend under 50% of their available time actually

cutting parts. Figure 6.3 presents a classification of different machining systems for

turning, drilling and milling with various levels of automation to eliminate material

handling-related delays at each operation and product travel between operations in the

process plan. Automatic toolchangers, tool magazines, carousels that function as part

magazines, on-line process monitoring and dimensional gauging, etc. are some of the

accessories that can be attached to FMMs to eliminate non-value adding delays in

product throughput time. The reductions in product throughput times by combining

consecutive operations will be greater if the products produced in the machining facility

have complex process plans requiring multiple machines. Using Littles Queuing

Formula (Winston, 1994), it has been shown that queuing delays in a facility can be

minimized by reduction in the number of process steps through (a) combination of

consecutive machining steps, (b) Design For Manufacturability (DFM) and (c) changes in

the facility layout (Andries and Gelders, 1995). Hence, facility compaction and material

handling reduction could be simultaneously achieved by a many-to-one replacement of

conventional machines by multi-function machining and turning FMMs.

- 133 -
Figure 6.3: Examples of how Fumes help to eliminate Delay Elements in Product
Throughput Time (Warnecke and Steinhilper, 1983)

- 134 -
6.3. Feasibility of Multi-Function FMMs

Pioneering research (Ito, 1982; Ito and Shinno, 1982) showed that, due to the

basic differences in the designs of conventional machine tools for different machining

processes, there are limitations to the combinations of machining functions that could be

integrated in a single FMM. Figure 4 describes a classification system by Ito (Ito, 1982;

Ito and Shinno, 1982) for measuring the similarity of conventional machine tools using

the planomiller as the base reference machine. The Ito-Shinno representation scheme for

comparison of conventional machine tools has two axes: One axis represents the Rate of

Commonness to measure the commonness of functional units among different machines,

and, the other axis represents the Rate of Similarity to measure the similarity of structural

configurations among different machines. Their research suggests that machining centers

that combine (a) a center lathe and a radial drill, (b) a center lathe and a horizontal mill

and (c) a center lathe and a gear shaper would have an increasing complexity of design

and control. Therefore, the design feasibility and fabrication complexity of any FMM

selected to replace two or more conventional machines could be assessed by observing if

those machines occur in a single cluster in the Ito-Shinno classification system.

- 135 -
Cluster Analysis of the Rate Correlations between the Rates of
of Similarity Matrix by the Commonness and Similarity for
Furthest Neighbor Method: Different Machine Tools:

Figure 6.4: Machine Tool Classification System for Design Feasibility of Multi-
Function FMMs (Ito and Shinno, 1982)

- 136 -
6.4. Layout Modules as A Basis for Design of FMMs

Since the typical routing (or process plan) of a product often consists of multiple

operations, each product would experience two types of delays (a) setup, processing,

batching and queuing delays at each operation and (b) travel delays due to material

handling between every pair of operations. For every pair of consecutive operations that

are not performed on the same machine, the material handling delay due to the physical

distance separating the two machines has a significant impact on work-in-process (WIP).

Harmon and Peterson (1990) state that If successive processes are immediately

adjacent, a single unit is moved at a time, as in an assembly line. If the next process is

across the aisle, the handling lot size is a unit load. If the next process is across the plant,

the handling lot size is at least an hours supply of product, because more frequent

collection is impractical. If the next process is in another plant, the handling lot size is at

least one days production. As the WIP between processes will be, at least, one half the

handling lot size, we see potential orders-of-magnitude differences in WIP levels based

on the layout . Similarly, for every pair of consecutive operations that are not

performed on the same machine, additional setup, loading/unloading, gauging, queuing,

etc. delays add to the product throughput time.

There could be significant savings in material handling costs if the machining

functions combined in a single FMM corresponded to strings of consecutive operations

that occurred with a high frequency in the process plans of several products. The cost

savings would be higher if these strings of operations were common to parts that were

produced in medium-to-large quantities in the facility. Thereby, the elimination of

- 137 -
material handling steps by FMMs that combine multiple machining functions could be

linked to the design of a compact facility layout for the jobshop as follows: Partition the

existing population of machines into layout modules to reduce the total number of inter-

machine material handling steps and replace the machines grouped in each module by

suitable multi-function FMMs.

In the simplest case, FMMs could replace select subsets of machines in the

process plans of products. However, the typical process plan of a product usually

consists of more than 2-3 machining operations that are performed on different

workstations. Hence, it would be necessary to group the machines that complement those

replaced by the FMMs into Flexible Machining Cells (FMCs) using suitable material

handling systems. Finally, the FMCs would need to be linked by a suitable material

handling system into an FMS that could serve the entire machining facility. We could

extend the heuristic method for generating layout modules to facility compaction. The

basic idea is that an FMM or FMC could be designed to replace the conventional

machines occurring in a group of common substrings of operations. The FMMs and

FMCs could define the structure of the material handling network that will be required

for the entire facility. In summary, using the process plans for the products being

produced in a machining facility, it is possible to compact the entire facility by

systematically identifying (a) sets of machines to be replaced by FMMs, (b) groups of

FMMs and complementary machines that could be linked to create FMCs and (c) a

material handling network to group the system of FMMs and FMCs into an FMS.

- 138 -
6.5. An Illustration of Conceptual Design of FMMs and FMCs

In this section, we illustrate the approach for conceptual design of FMMs and

FMCs, using data obtained from an aerospace machining jobshop that had implemented a

single machining cell. Table 6.2 presents the initial routing data for the sample of parts

provided by the company. The routings are first sorted to eliminate identical ones, as

shown in Table 6.3. Table 6.4 presents the unique common substrings and their

occurrence frequencies. Figure 6.5 shows the machine compositions and material flow

patterns in the FMMs, FMC and other Layout Modules that were designed using different

clusters of common substrings identified in the cluster analysis dendrogram. An FMC

comprised of the CNC Lathe (Machine #8), CNC Mill (Machine #10) and Cleaning

Station (Machine #94) is identified. Alternatively, a Turning Center (FMM #1) can

replace Machines #8 and #10 in the FMC. Based on machine group #1 in Figure 6.5, a

single-function FMM for turning operations only by combining the CNC Lathe (Machine

#8) and Conventional Lathe (Machine #18) is identified.

Table 6.5, which shows the overall material flow network for the jobshop, is

developed using the routing data in Table 6.3. This table corresponds to the directed

graph in Figure 6.6 which shows how the various machining FMMs, in combination with

Functional Layout modules for processes such as Welding, EDM and Surface Treatment,

could be implemented to compact the entire facility. Figure 6.7 shows that, if no facility

compaction occurred, then even an optimal block layout for the jobshop generated using

Table 6.5 would exhibit complex material flow patterns. From a facility layout

perspective, the occurrence of the Outside Vendor (O.V.) operations in a large number of

- 139 -
operation sequences indicated that both Machine Group #1 and Machine Group #2 could

be located near the Shipping/Receiving docks, in order to ensure rapid response to

customer quotes for part families that required O.V. operations. Figures 6.8 and 6.9,

which show the actual cell and overall facility layouts implemented by the jobshop,

indicate that several desirable proximities and combinations of machining functions are

clearly not honored during the design of the facility.

Unique Routing # Common Substrings Frequency of Occurrence

1 8,10 13
2 1,18 8
3 8,94 5
4 18,94 5
5 92,8 5
6 18,96,92,96,92 4
7 8,1 3
8 8,10,8 3
9 8,10,1 3
10 1,18,96,92,96,92,8 3
11 92,8,10 3
12 25,94 3
13 1,18,94 3
14 1,94 2
15 8,10,8,1 2
16 8,10,1,18 2
17 22,94 2
18 8,10,94 2
19 8,1,18 2
20 1,18,96,92,96,92,8,94 2
21 91,8 2
22 8,10,2 2

Table 6.4: Unique Common Substring

- 140 -
 Part Routings
Part Index Part No. Quantity
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 18150 900 8 94

2 18164 720 8 10 8 O.V. 94

3 18179 720 8 10 O.V. 18 22 94

4 21306 5603 8 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 10 94

5 21097 900 18 96 92 96 92 18 94

6 21275 900 91 90 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

7 21275-1 900 91 25 94

8 21275-2 113 8 94

9 21275-3 113 8 94

10 21275-4 900 8 94

11 21275-5 900 8 94

12 25043 720 8 10 94

13 25896 720 20 91 O.V. 18 94

14 25896-1 720 8 10 8 94

15 25896-2 720 8 10 92 94

16 25896-3 720 8 94

17 26033 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

18 26034 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

19 26035 900 91 18 94

20 26035-1 900 8 10 O.V. 94

21 26035-2 7200 8 94

22 26035-3 900 8 10 94

23 26036 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

24 26037 900 91 8 94

25 26037-1 900 8 10 O.V. 94

26 26037-2 7200 8 94

27 26037-3 900 8 10 DFLOW 94

28 26038 900 8 94

29 26039 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

30 26083 900 8 10 DFLOW O.V. 18 94

31 26392 900 91 90 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

32 26392-1 900 91 25 94

33 26392-2 900 8 94

34 26392-3 900 8 94

35 26392-4 900 8 94

36 26392-5 900 8 94

37 26440 900 8 19 O.V. 18 25 94

38 26610 180 19 92 8 10 8 O.V. 18 94

39 27464 720 91 8 92 8 10 22 94

40 27464-1 720 8 10 O.V. 94

41 27464-2 720 8 10 19 8 23 94

42 27464-3 720 19 25 94

WORK CENTER CODES:

08 = CNC LATHE 90 = LEAK CHECK

10 = CNC MILL 91 = EB WELD

18 = CONVENTIONAL LATHE 92 = VACUUM FURNACE

19 = CONVENTIONAL MILL 94 = CLEAN

20 = ASSEMBLY 96 = COAT

22 = GRINDING OV = OUTSIDE PROCESS

23 = SINKER EDM DFLOW = ABRASIVE FLOW

25 = WIRE EDM

Table 6.2: Routings for a Sample of Parts obtained from a Machining Jobshop

- 141 -
 Part Routings
Unique Index Part Index Part No. Quantity
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 18150 900 8 94

8 21275-2 113 8 94

9 21275-3 113 8 94

10 21275-4 900 8 94

11 21275-5 900 8 94

16 25896-3 720 8 94
1 21 26035-2 7200 8 94

26 26037-2 7200 8 94

28 26038 900 8 94

33 26392-2 900 8 94

34 26392-3 900 8 94

35 26392-4 900 8 94

36 26392-5 900 8 94
2 2 18164 720 8 10 8 O.V. 94
3 3 18179 720 8 10 O.V. 18 22 94
4 4 21306 5603 8 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 10 94
5 5 21097 900 18 96 92 96 92 18 94

6 21275 900 91 90 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

6
31 26392 900 91 90 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

7 21275-1 900 91 25 94
7
32 26392-1 900 91 25 94

12 25043 720 8 10 94
8
22 26035-3 900 8 10 94
9 13 25896 720 20 91 O.V. 18 94
10 14 25896-1 720 8 10 8 94
11 15 25896-2 720 8 10 92 94

17 26033 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

18 26034 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

12
23 26036 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

29 26039 900 8 10 O.V. 18 96 92 96 92 8 94

13 19 26035 900 91 18 94

20 26035-1 900 8 10 O.V. 94

14 25 26037-1 900 8 10 O.V. 94

40 27464-1 720 8 10 O.V. 94

15 24 26037 900 91 8 94
16 27 26037-3 900 8 10 DFLOW 94
17 30 26083 900 8 10 DFLOW O.V. 18 94
18 37 26440 900 8 19 O.V. 18 25 94
19 38 26610 180 19 92 8 10 8 O.V. 18 94
20 39 27464 720 91 8 92 8 10 22 94
21 41 27464-2 720 8 10 19 8 23 94
22 42 27464-3 720 19 25 94

WORK CENTER CODES:

08 = CNC LATHE 90 = LEAK CHECK

10 = CNC MILL 91 = EB WELD

18 = CONVENTIONAL LATHE 92 = VACUUM FURNACE

19 = CONVENTIONAL MILL 94 = CLEAN

20 = ASSEMBLY 96 = COAT

22 = GRINDING OV = OUTSIDE PROCESS

23 = SINKER EDM DFLOW = ABRASIVE FLOW

25 = WIRE EDM

Table 6.3: Identification of Unique Routings in the Sample of Parts

- 142 -
 Merger Coefficient OV 18 94
35.46
FMM #2
8
96

56.97
92
M/C Group #2

78.49

100.00
1 22 9 16 8 15 7 19 5 11 3 18 21 4 13 14 2 6 10 20 12 17

Common_Substring

FMM #2 FMC
8
M/C Group #1 FMM #1

8 18
10 94
FMM #1

10 OV

DFLOW

Figure 6.5: Clusters of Similar Common Substrings converted into FMMs, an FMC and
Cell-type Layout Modules

Welding Module

20 EDM Module

91
25 23

90
94
8
DFLOW
22
10 19 Machining Cell
O.V.

18

Surface Treatment
CNC Turning - Milling Module
96 92
Module

Figure 6.6: Decomposition of Overall Material Flow Network into Layout Modules

- 143 -
 Work
8 94 10 O.V. 18 22 96 92 91 90 25 20 DFLOW 19 23
Center
8 0 29566 19643 6503 0 0 0 720 0 0 0 0 0 900 720
94 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 1620 7223 0 6840 0 720 0 720 0 0 0 0 1800 720 0
O.V. 0 3240 0 0 14423 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
18 0 3600 0 0 0 720 11903 0 0 0 900 0 0 0 0
22 0 1440 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
96 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23806 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
- 144 -

92 11903 720 0 0 900 0 11903 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

91 1620 0 0 720 900 0 0 0 0 1800 1800 0 0 0 0
90 0 0 0 1800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
25 0 3420 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
20 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 720 0 0 0 0 0 0
DFLOW 0 900 0 900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
19 720 0 0 900 0 0 0 180 0 0 720 0 0 0 0
23 0 720 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Table 6.5: Directed Graph Representation of Overall Material Flows in the Jobshop
 20 90 96 92 19 25 23

91 O.V. 18 D.F. 10 8 94 22

Family 1 Family 2 Family 3 Family 4

Figure 6.7: Facility Layout for the Jobshop based on Table 6.5

LVAD CELL LAYOUT

(34' X 20')

Machines #8
KBAN RAW SLANT-3 TMC-15 KBAN and #10 were
RACK RACK assigned to
#2
MATL (WET OPS) (DRY OPS)
#1 this cell
3'X6' 8' X 11' 4.5' X 12'

SEQUENCE Q.C.
SURF
BOARD PLATE
BENCH
2' X 3' 3' X 8'

TOOL DYNAFLOW
CAB CNC MILL MACH
3.5' X 4.5' (NEW) 4' X 6'
7.5' X 14'

Figure 6.8: Layout of Pilot Cell that was implemented by the Jobshop

- 145 -
 COAT,CLEAN,
SHPG DEPT QC DEPT EB WELDING W.EDM
VAC FIRE
O.V. 91 25 90,92,94,96

AISLE
LVAD CELL LAYOUT (34' X 20')
SLANT-3 GRINDING
KBAN RAW TMC-15 KBAN
RACK MATL (WET OPS) (DRY OPS) RACK 22
#2 3'X6' 8'X11' #1
4.5'X12'
CNC MILL DEPT CNC LATHE DEPT CONV MACH DEPT EDM DEPT
SURF Q.C.
SEQUENCE
PLATE BENCH
10 8 BOARD
3'X8' 18,19,20 23
2'X3'
- 146 -

TOOL DYNAFLOW
CAB CNC MILL MACH
3.5'X4.5' (NEW) 4'X6'
7.5'X14'

08,10,DFLOW

Figure 6.9: Location of Pilot Cell in the Overall Layout of the Jobshop
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderberg, M.R. (1973). Cluster Analysis for Applications, New York, NY:
Academic Press.

Andries, B. and Gelders, L. (1995). Time-based manufacturing logistics. Logistics

Information Management, 8(6), 25-31.

Apple, J.M. (1950). Plant Layout and Materials Handling, New York, NY:
Ronald Press Company.

Armour, G.C. and Buffa, E.S. (1963). A heuristic algorithm and simulation
approach to relative location of facilities. Management Science, 9(2), 294-309.

Arvindh, B. and Irani, S.A (1994). Cell formation: The need for integrated
solution of the subproblems. International Journal of Production Research, 32(5),
1197-1218.

Askin, R.G., Ciarallo, F. and Lundgren, N.H. (1999). Empirical evaluation of

holonic and fractal layouts. International Journal of Production Research, 37(5),
961-978.

Askin, R.G., Lundgren, N.H. and Ciarallo, F. (1996). A material flow based
evaluation of layout alternatives for agile manufacturing. In Progress in Material
Handling Research (Ed: Graves R.J. et al), 71-90, Ann Arbor, MI: Material
Handling Institute, Braun-Brumfield Inc.

Askin, R.G. and Zhou, M. (1998). Formation of independent flowline cells based
on operation requirements and machine capabilities. IIE Transactions, 30, 319-
329.

Beasley, J.E. (1996). Advances in Linear and Integer Programming, Oxford,

England: Oxford University Press.

- 147 -
 Benjaafar, S. and Sheikhzadeh, M. (2000). Design of flexible plant layouts. IIE
Transactions, 32, 309-322.

Bolz, H.A. and Hagemann, G.E. (1958). From-to charts. In Materials Handling
Handbook, 246-253, New York, NY: Ronald Press Co.

Bozer, Y.A., Meller, R.D. and Erlebacher, S.J. (1994). An improvement-type

layout algorithm for single and multiple-floor facilities. Management Science,
40(7), 918-932.

Buffa, E.S. (1955). Sequence analysis for functional layouts. Journal of Industrial
Engineering, March-April, 12-13.

Burbidge, J.L. (1975). The Introduction of Group Technology, New York, NY:
John Wiley.

Burbidge, J.L. (1963). Production flow analysis. Production Engineer, 42(12),

742-752.

Cameron, D.C. (1960,). From-To Charts analyze layout and materials handling
problems. Modern Materials Handling, November-December, 29-32.

Cameron, D.C. (1952). From-To Charts A tool for analyzing material

movement problems. Modern Materials Handling, January, 37-40.

Chiang, W.-C. and Kouvelis, P. (1996). An improved tabu search heuristic for
solving facility layout design problems. International Journal of Production
Research, 34(9), 2565-2585.

Coggins, J.M. (1983). Dissimilarity measures for clustering strings. In Time

Warps, String Edits and Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of Sequence
Comparison, edited by Sankoff, D. and Kruskal, J.B. Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley, 311-321.

Costanza, J.R. (1996). The Quantum Leap: In Speed To-Market. Denver, CO:
John Costanza Institute of Technology, Inc.

Cung, V.-D., Mautor, T., Michelon, P. and Tavares, A. (1997). A scatter search
based approach for the quadratic assignment problem. Proceedings of the IEEE

- 148 -
 International Conference on Evolutionary Computation and Evolutionary
Programming, Indianapolis, IN, 165-170.

Eilon, S. (1962). Elements of Production Planning and Control, New York, NY:
Macmillan.

Farr, D.E. (1955). Charts that show problems .. and solve them, too. Modern
Materials Handling, January, 26-28.

Phillips, E.J. (1997). Manufacturing Plant Layout: Fundamentals and Fine Points
of Optimum Facility Design, Dearborn, MI: Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Fisher, M.L. (1985). An applications oriented guide to Lagrangian relaxation.

Interfaces, 15(2), 10-21.

Fisher, M.L. (1981). The Lagrangian relaxation method for solving integer
programming problems. Management Science, 27(1), 1-18.

Foulds, L.R. and Giffin, J.W. (1985). A graph theoretic heuristic for minimizing
total transport cost in facilities layout. International Journal of Production
Research, 23(6), 1247-1257.

Garey, M.R. and Johnson, D.S. (1979). Computers and Intractability: A Guide to
the Theory of NP-Completeness, New York, NY: W.H. Freeman.

Glover, F. (1990). Tabu search, Part II. ORSA Journal on Computing, 2(1), 4-32.

Glover, F. (1989). Tabu search, Part I. ORSA Journal on Computing, 1(3), 190-
206.

Glover, F. (1977). Heuristics for integer programming using surrogate constraints.

Decision Sciences, 8, 156-166.

Glover, F., Kochenberger, G.A. and Alidaee, B. (1998). Adaptive memory tabu
search for binary quadratic programs. Management Science, 44(3), 336-345.

Hansen, P. and Jaumard, B. (1997). Cluster analysis and mathematical

programming. Mathematical Programming, 79, 191-215.

- 149 -
 Harhalakis, G., Lu, T., Minis, I. and Nagi, R. (1996). A practical method for
design of hybrid-type production facilities. International Journal of Production
Research, 34(4), 897-918.

Harmon, R.L. and Peterson, L.D. (1990). Reinventing the factory, New York, NY:
The Free Press.

Held, M. and Karp, R.M. (1971). The traveling-salesman problem and minimum
spanning trees: Part II. Mathematical Programming, 1, 6-25

Held, M. and Karp, R.M. (1970). The traveling-salesman problem and minimum
spanning trees. Operations Research, 18, 1138-1162

Hillier, F.S. and Lieberman, G.J. (2001). Introduction to Operations Research,

New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Ho, Y.C., Lee, C.C. and Moodie, C.L. (1993). Two sequence-pattern, matching-
based, flow analysis methods for multi-flowlines layout design. International
Journal of Production Research, 31(7), 1557-1578.

Holstein, W.K. and Berry, W.L. (1970). Work flow structure: An analysis for
planning and control. Management Science, 16(6), 324-336.

Huang, H. and Irani, S. A. (1999). Design of facility layouts using layout

modules: A numerical clustering approach. Proceedings of the 8th Industrial
Engineering Research Conference, Phoenix, AZ, May 23-26.

Immer, J.R. (1950). Layout Planning Techniques, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Irani, S.A. (1997). Production flow analysis in a semiconductor fab. Proceedings

of the joint National Science Foundation and Semiconductor Research
Corporation Workshop on Operational Methods in Semiconductor
Manufacturing, Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, February 19-
20.

Irani, S.A. (1990). A flow decomposition approach for integrated layout design of
virtual group technology flowlines. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Industrial
and Manufacturing Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, College
Park, PA.

- 150 -
 Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (2000). Custom design of facility layouts for multi-
product facilities using layout modules. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and
Automation, 16(3), 259-267.

Irani, S.A. and Huang, H. (1998). Hybrid cellular layouts. White Paper,
Department of Industrial, Welding and Systems Engineering, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH.

Irani, S.A. and Ramakrishnan, R. (1995). Production flow analysis using

STORM. Planning, Design, and Analysis of Cellular Manufacturing Systems,
edited by A.K. Kamrani, H.R. Parsaei and D.H. Liles, Elsevier Science B.V., 299-
346.

Irani, S.A., Zhang, H., Zhou, J., Huang, H., Tennati, K.U. and Subramanian, S.
(2000), Production flow analysis and simplification toolkit (PFAST).
International Journal of Production Research, 38(3), 1855-1874

Ireson, W.G. (1952). Factory Planning and Plant Layout. New York, NY:
Prentice-Hall

Ito, Y. (1982). Description of machining function in FMS and its analysis.

Proceedings of the Twenty Third International Machine Tool Design and
Research Conference, London, UK, 503-509.

Ito, Y. and Shinno, H. (1982). Structural description and similarity evaluation of

the structural configuration in machine tools. International Journal of Machine
Tool Design and Research, 22(2), 97-110.

Iwata, K. (1984). FMS in Japan. Bulletin of the Japan Society of Precision

Engineering, 18(2), 186-192.

King, J.R. (1980). Machine-component group formation in production flow

analysis. International Journal of Production Research, 18(2), 213-232.

Kochhar, J.S. and Heragu, S.S. (1999). Facility layout design in a changing
environment. International Journal of Production Research, 37(11), 2429-2446.

- 151 -
 Koren, Y., Jovane, F., Moriwaki, T., Pristchow, G., Ulsoy, G. and Brusell
H.V.(1999). Reconfigurable manufacturing systems. Annals of the CIRP, 48, 527-
539.

Kulturel, S., Norman, B.A., Coit, D.W. and Smith, A.E. (2000). Exploiting tabu
search memory in constrained problems. Technical Report, 00-1, Dept. of
Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh.

Leonard, R. (1975). Economic considerations of machine tool selection.

Machinery and Production Engineering, 126, 214-216.

Levenshtein, V.I. (1966). Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions

and reversals. Cybernetics and Control Theory, 10(8), 707-710.

Llewellyn, R.W. (1958). From-To Charting with realistic criteria. Journal of

Industrial Engineering, May-June, 217-220.

Lundy, J.L. (1955). A reply to Prof. Wayland P. Smiths article. Journal of

Industrial Engineering, May-June, 9.

Masek, W.J. and Patterson, M.S. (1980). A faster algorithm for computing string-
edit distances. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 20(1), 18-31.

McAuley, J. (1972). Machine grouping for efficient production. Production

Engineer, 51, 53-57.

Meller, R.D. (2000). Multi-channel manufacturing. White Paper, Department of

Industrial and Systems Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL.

Meller, R. and DeShazo, R.L. (2000). Multi-channel manufacturing at electrical

box & enclosures. Working Paper, Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering, Virginia Tech.

Montreuil, B. (2000). Design of agile factory networks for fast-growing

companies. The 6th International Colloquium on Material Handling Research,
York, PA, June 11-14.

- 152 -
 Montreuil, B. and Lefrancois, P. (1996). Organizing factories as responsibility
networks. In Progress in Material Handling Research (Ed: Graves R.J. et al),
375-411, Material Handling Institute, Braun-Brumfield Inc., Ann Arbor,
Michingan.

Montreuil, B. and Ratliff, H.D. (1989). Utilizing cut trees as design skeletons for
facility layout. IIE Transactions, 21(2), 136-143.

Moodie, C.L., Drolet, J., Ho, Y.-C. and Warren, G.M.H. (1994). Cell design
strategies for efficient material handling. In Material Flow Systems in
Manufacturing (Chapter 3), Edited by Tanchoco, J.M., 76-101, New York, NY:
Chapman & Hall.

Moore, J.M. (1962). Plant Layout and Design, New York, NY: Macmillan.

Mulvey, J.M. and Beck, M.P. (1984). Solving capacitated clustering problems.
European Journal of Operational Research, 18, 339-348.

Mulvey, J.M. and Crowder, H. (1979). Cluster analysis: An application of

Lagrangian relaxation. Management Science, 25(4), 329-340.

Muther, J.M. (1955). Practical Plant Layout, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Muther, R.A. (1973). Systematic Layout Planning, Kansas City, MO:

Management and Industrial Research Publications.

Powley, C. (1983). In perspective: Flexible manufacturing The facts. Machinery

and Production Engineering, 141, 22-28.

Reed, R. (1961). Plant Layout: Factors, Principles and Techniques. Homewood,

IL: Richard D. Irwin.

Reis, I.L. and Andersen, G.E. (1960). Relative importance factors in layout
analysis. Journal of Industrial Engineering, July-August, 312-316.

Sankoff, D. and Kruskal, J.B. (1983). Time Warps, String Edits and
Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of Sequence Comparison, Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley.

- 153 -
 Schneider, M. (1960). Cross charting techniques as a basis for plant layout.
Journal of Industrial Engineering, November-December, 478-483.

Schneider, M. (1957). Cross chart solves layout problems. Modern Materials

Handling, June, 146-148.

Seppanen, J. and Moore, J.M. (1970). Facilities planning with graph theory.
Management Science, 17(4), 242-253.

Shapiro, J.F. (1979). Mathematical Programming: Structures and Algorithms,

New York, NY: John Wiley.

Shukla, J. (1995). Hybrid and progressive cellular layouts for jobshops. Master of
Science thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN.

Shunk, D. and Reed, R. (1975). An analytical approach to measure the effects of

group technology. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on
Production Systems, 627-634, New York, NY: Chapman & Hall.

Skorin-Kapov, J. (1994). Extension of a tabu search adaptation to the quadratic

assignment problem. Computers and Operations Research, 21(8), 855-865.

Skorin-Kapov, J. (1990). Tabu search applied to the quadratic assignment

problem. ORSA Journal on Computing, 2(1), 33-45.

Smith, A.E. and Tate, D.M. (1993). Genetic optimization using a penalty
function, Processing of the 5th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms,
499-505.

Smith, W.P. (1955). From-to charting First aid for plant layout. Journal of
Industrial Engineering, January, 13-15.

Sneath, D.H.A. and Sokal, R.R. (1973). Numerical Taxonomy, San Francisco,
CA: Freeman Press.

Tam, K.Y. (1990). An operation sequence based similarity coefficient for part
families formation. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 9(1), 55-67.

- 154 -
 Tarjan, R.E. (1973). Depth-first search and linear graph algorithms. SIAM Journal
on Computing, 1, 146-160.

Tilsley, R., Lewis, F.A. and Galloway, D.F. (1977). Flexible cell production
systems: A realistic approach. CIRP Annals, 25(1), 269-271.

Tompkins, J.A., White, J.A., Bozer, Y.A., Frazelle, E.H., Tanchoco, J.M.A. and
Trevino, J. (1996). Facilities Planning, New York, NY: John Wiley.

Vakharia, A.J. and Wemmerlov, U. (1990). Designing a cellular manufacturing

system: A materials flow approach based on operation sequences. IIE
Transactions, 22(1), 84-97.

Venkatadri, U., Rardin, R. and Montreuil, B. (1997). A design methodology for

fractal layout organization. IIE Transactions, 29, 911-924.

Wagner, R.A. and Fischer, M.J. (1974). The string-to-string correction problem.
Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, 21, 168-173.

Ward, J.H. (1963). Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function.

Journal of the American Statistical Association, 58, 236-244.

Warnecke, H.J. and Steinhilper, R. (1983). New international developments for

flexible automation in FMS. Proceedings of the Second International Conference
on Flexible Manufacturing Systems, London, UK, 681-693.

Webster, D.B. and Tyberghein, M.B. (1980). Measuring flexibility of jobshop

layouts. International Journal of Production Research, 18(1), 21-29.

Weiss, P.E. and Smith, W.P. (1955). Readers comments. Journal of Industrial
Engineering, September-October, 37-38.

Wick, C. (1987). Turning centers update. Manufacturing Engineering, 99, 41-48.

Winston, W.L. (1994). Operations Research: Applications and Algorithms.

Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press.

Wolstenholme, D.J., Dale, B.G. and Pelham, R.J. (1980). Product-based group
technology pay-off. Machinery and Production Engineering, September 3, 45-48.

- 155 -
 Womack, J.P. and Jones, D.T. (1996). Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create
Wealth in Your Corporation, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Wong, C.K. and Chandra, A.K. (1976). Bounds for the string-editing problem.
Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, 23, 13-16.

- 156 -