Study On RE-based Virtual Cellular Manufacturing Systems Formation Problem In Dual-resource Constrained Settings

Virtual Cellular Manufacturing System (VCMS), as one of the main applications ofGroup Technology, is very popular with many scholars at home and abroad in recent years.A VCMS copies with the dynamic demand changes through dynamic logic grouping ofresources, which both retains the flexibility of the functional layout and at the same timeovercomes the limitations of the traditional CMS in changing the physical arrangement ofthe layout. The flexiable characteristic of VCMS is mainly benefit from its flexibility inresource sharing. Because of the arrival of the multi-functional universal equipment, theinappropriate of resource analysis and allocation even will cause problem such asequipment overlapping and low equipment utilization. Besides, workers are also importantfactors to influence system flexibility. Previous studies have tended to ignore it. Therefore,taking workers’ factors into consideration and at the same time doing research on theanalysis method for resources can improve the overall performance of VCMSs. This papertakes workers as the second important resources and forms virtual cell in Dual-ResourceConstrained settings (DRC) making the study of this problem has more practicalsignificance. Whats’ more, this paper defines Resource Element (RE) to express the uniqueand shared capability boundaries of machine tools, which can effectively solve the aboveproblems and makes the application of RE in VCMSs more perfect. It not only provides aclear resource definition for VCMSs, but also provides reference for subsequent researchwork about VCMSs, thus makes the global optimization of VCMSs more feasible.In view of the complexity of the problem under study, this paper attempts to study intwo stages. The first stage of research is about implementation process of equipmentcapacity analysis based on RE. Equipment capacity can be divided into processing capacityand production capacity. According to distribution of the processing ability ofmulti-function equipment, a hierarchical cluster analysis by SAS software is proposed to doclustering analysis on them. After doing this, the processing capacity of equipment isexpressed as series of RE, which clearly describes the unique and shared capabilitybetween equipment. The second stage of study is about formation of VC based on REobtained from the first stage of this research. This stage attempts to form VCMS in DRCsettings using a multi-objective mathematical model with a goal programming approach.Using the developed model, parts, machines and workers are grouped and assigned to the generated virtual cells at the same time. Because of the complexity of the multi-objectivemodel, a multi-objective Tabu Search (TS) algorithm is designed to find solutions of theproposed model. Then the validity of the model is proved by a numerical example.In order to inspect and verify the actual application of the approach in this paper, thispaper probe deeply into a shipbuilding co., LTD. After analyzing the current productionmanagement status and existing problems in detail, this paper applied the proposedapproach in the machining process of the pipe in the tube processing plant. Proposed thecorresponding plan for virtual cell formation, this paper made a comparison between theresult before and after improvement. The results showed the feasibility and effectiveness ofthe proposed program.