AN APPLICATION OF GROUP TECHNOLOGY IN MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

Abstract

The nature of product manufacture adopted by engineering industries could be broady classified as 'explosive' and 'implosive' systems. [22]. The L implosive systems are those which start with a wide variety of raw materials and bought-outs, converted them into a large number of finished parts and then combine these parts to assemble saleable finished product. Electric motors, pumps, machine-tools, etc. belong to this category. The explosive systems, on the other hand, start with a small variety of raw materials and convert them into a wide variety of finished components, e.g. foundry products, sheet metal items, etc. Both the systems are represented in Fig. 1.1 [22]. The type of manufacturing system implemented for the manufacture of components is largely influenced by the type of product (whether it belongs to either implosive or explosive) and annual demand apart from other technical considerations. 1 The manufacturing systems are conventionally classified into three different systems [27]