Part family formation for variety reduction in flexible manufacturing systems

Presents the similarity coefficient method for group technology to alleviate the part family formation problem in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Part families are formed in FMS in order to take advantage of part similarities in design and manufacture. Parts coding and classification analysis (PCA) has constituted the bulk of part family formation techniques in practice. Using shape-based features for grouping is very labour intensive at the coding and classification stages. As a means of alleviating the latter problem, presents an approach for converting the weighted codes of the PCA to similarity coefficient measures. Uses a clustering algorithm to identify the part families. Presents a numerical example that compares the single and average linkage clustering technologies. An experimental investigation of the two methods showed that the average linkage clustering (ALC) performs better than the single linkage clustering (SLC) technology in minimizing intercellular materials handling costs.