GROUP TECHNOLOGY APPROACH TO PRODUCTION PLANNING IN FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM (FMS)

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. Recently, the introduction of the concept of Group Technology (GT) has a revolutionary effect in manufacturing. 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. However, comparatively little work has been done to analyse this problem designed for the use of group technology. The present work is an extension of-the solution methodology by K.Hitomi, et al. An optimizing algorithm has been presented and on the basis of this algorithm a computer program on Fortran IV has been developed.