Group technology in production management : the short horizon planning level
Résumé
We consider a set of parts divided into subsets called part types, determined in such a way that the parts belonging to the same part type are manufactured using the same sequence of tasks (i.e. the same working process). We are looking for a partition of the set of part types in subsets called part families, and for a partition of the set of tasks in subsets called production subsystems defined as follows: 1) the number of part families and the number of production subsystems are equal 2) one (and only one) production subsystem corresponds to each part family 3) one (and only one) part family corresponds to each production subsystem 4) the previous partitions minimize the number of tasks performed in a production subsystem different from the one which corresponds to the part family containing the part involved. We give a fast algorithm which leads to a good solution depending on the initial set of part families. We also propose an algorithm to find a "good" initial set of part families.