Integrated autonomous cellular manufacturing - a new concept for the 21st century

This paper is directed toward the development of models, methods and tools suitable for effective, profitable, and autonomous cellular manufacturing as a new vision for the 21st Century. Cellular manufacturing is mainly concerned with the efficient integration of three major concerns: (1) planning-oriented predictive cellular layout design; (2) an unexpected order-adapted cellular manufacturing through the integration between manufacturing decision processes and cellular layout, and (3) a contingency-driving shop floor adaptation for supporting continuous improvement. The possibility of sudden large changes in demand rate and process route is greatly reduced by both the detailed analysis of decision processes and the reconfiguration of existing facilities through workers' high skills. To increase the ability of reaction to shop floor contingencies, real-time information on the conditions of the shop floor will be analysed to support continuous improvements for sustaining superior performances in unexpected changes. The continuous improvements support the user with five modules real-time status monitoring, real data analysis and forecasts renewal, diagnosis through intelligent decision support system, simulation optimisation, and results evaluation and performance measurement.