A methodology for investigating effects of cell size on operational flexibility in flexible manufacturing systems

There are two aspects to cell formation in flexible manufacturing systems, cell sizing or deciding on the optimum number of machines to be allocated to each cell, and then allocation of specific machines to each cell. Although the latter problem has been investigated extensively there is a paucity of published work on the former. This paper discusses the effects of cell sizing on operational flexibility.Operational flexibility is that aspect of flexibility that enables manufacturing systems to respond with speed and efficiency to changes in the manufacturing environment while maintaining an effective level of control.