Integrating the production planning and cellular layout for flexible cellular manufacturing

This paper aims to design a flexible cellular layout and to discuss its methodology. The method integrates production planning and cellular layout in a long-run planning horizon. The integrated planning model is formulated as a mixed-integer problem (MIP), which contains two types of integer programming problems: determining (1) the production quantity for each product and (2) the timing of adjusting for the cellular layout in a finite planning horizon with dynamic demand situation. This decision problem is solved so as to minimize the sum of inventory-holding costs, group-setup costs, material-handling costs and layout-adjusting costs subject to the capacity constraint and the demand requirement. The Benders decomposition is used to solve the MIP. The dual problem obtained is solved by linear programming using large-scale programming techniques. In addition, a method is also presented to cope with an uncertainty by adjusting individual production rates from their initially planned levels on a rolling horizon of several periods. Finally, a numerical example is demonstrated to explain the analytical results.