Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS)

. In today’s highly competing environment, industries are aspiring to enact and sustain highly productive assets. Productive assets can be accomplished through product performance, initiation to new product (product design & development), or manufacturing performances like product, process and volume flexibility, low unit cost, higher throughput. The cellular manufacturing system has been turned out as eminent manufacturing strategy that assists to improve manufacturing adaptability and throughput by applying the conception of group technology(GT). The major objective of this research is to develop the contextual relation between the barriers of CMS. Moreover, this paper is also helpful to interpret collective impacts of these barriers and

Cellular manufacturing System (CMS) is an application of GT which emerged as a promising alternative to Indian manufacturing industries. Few industries have introduced CMS as a consequence of the application of GT [6, 7].

Group Technology (GT) is a management ideology in which similar parts are identified and arranged into part families possessing similar design and manufacturing features. Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS) is based on the concept of group technology in which dissimilar machines are aggregated into cell. A manufacturing cell is a cluster of machines which is dedicated to the production of parts, limited group of families. A survey of implementations in CMS observed variety of benefits in the manufacturing system (Wemmerlov & Hyer, 1987). Singh (1993) and Heragu (1994) reviewed various GT and CMS design

Most of them are based on the cell formation problem. As a result, various methods have been developed ranging from simple methods to heuristic methods (G.A, S.A). Agarwal et al reviewed comparative performance studies on cellular manufacturing layout problem[10]. Greene T et al (1984) reviewed merits, assumptions and design techniques in cellular manufacturing [11]. Kamrani A et al (1993) surveyed design methods for manufacturing cells [12]. The case studies of the individual firms have revealed some implementation issues of CMS.Few authors [6, 7, and 17] have conducted survey studies in American and Japanese manufacturing industries. Earlier, the study of large scale industries using CMS have been conducted [2].Burbridge provides finite benefits data and implementation experiences of cellular manufacturing for few industries [14]. Dale and Willey collected extensive data from 28 firms with cells [15]. Harvey [16] conducted a study of 11 plants using questionnaire based survey approach. This study, focusing mostly on implementation and industrial interactions. Wemmerlov and Johnson conducted a survey of 46 user plants involved with CMS. Forty six plants provided detailed data of their cells; types of operations performed in the cells, and achieved performance improvements [7]. The study revealed that manufacturing cells provide substantial benefits like lower