PRODUCTION PLANNING IN MANUFACTURING SYSTEM USING GROUP TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Production Planning is the most important pre-requisite for all production activities. With an efficient production planning, manufacturing activities would meet the most objectives decided. The Introduction of the concept of Group Technology (GT) has a revolutionary effect in manufac-turing. In this thesis one particular aspect of Production Planning with Group Technology approach has been discussed. Machine loading and Product-mix decisions are major problems in the field of production planning. A large number of analytical models concerning Machine loading and Product-mix have been developed for batch production environment. In this thesis, a single stage manufacturing system machining a group of parts has been analysed with a view to determine the optimal cutting speed and feed. The optimizing criterion selected for the purpose is based on "the minimization of unit production cost and unit production time. The optimizing algorithm has been developed for a nonlinear objective function subject to technological constraints such as availability of Power, surface finish etc. The present work is an extension of the work by K.Hitomi, et. al. The optimizing algorithm has also been used to maximize the total amount of product items in machine loading problem. iv The optimizing algorithm is based on the use of flexibility tolerance method and on the -basis of this algorithm the computer program in FORTRAN IV has been developed.