CHAPTER 13

Manufacturing systems
design: a review of state-of-
the-art methodologies
Jason T. Yien and Mitchell M. Tseng, Department of
Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management,
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Hong Kong

13.1 INTRODUCTION

Manufacturing is one of the most crucial sectors of the economy.

Nowadays, more and more countries are realizing that manufacturing
brings wealth to their societies. Therefore, development of the manu-
facturing industry has become one of the key items on the agenda of
governments. Not only developing countries, but developed countries
also recognize these imperatives. The progress in manufacturing has
gone through several major evolutionary stages in recent years, from
early process automation to factory automation. However, manu-
facturing system design still remains mostly in the trial-and-error stage.
A manufacturing system is the key to efficient and effective coordination
of resources, and is especially critical to the quality of products and
services. It can hardly be left to trial-and-error. Since the quality of a
system has to be built in through design, the subject of manufacturing
system design is realized as one of the most important areas of research.
However, due to the dynamics and the complexity of manufacturing
systems, it is also recognized as one of the most difficult.
Historically, manufacturing systems are built with heavy dependence
on empirical experience. The experience of the designers plays a
significant part in the entire system design. The designers used to be the
owners or higher level managers, and they usually specialized in a few
particular areas; therefore, as they were designing they may not have
had the complete system in mind. On the other hand, without the aid of
adequate tools, the complexity of the system could not be dealt with in

B. Wang (ed.), Integrated Product, Process and Enterprise Design

© Chapman & Hall 1997
 Manufacturing and manufacturing systems 393

the past. The availability of low cost computing capabilities and software
tools has opened up new avenues for manufacturing systems design.
The complexity of the system design can be abstracted and the different
alternatives can be modeled virtually on the computer systems. With the
proper use of available technology and tools, a better design can be
assessed and optimized. The main purpose of this paper is to review the
current state-of-the-art methodologies and tools designers use through-
out the design process. Even though a complete and robust methodology
is not yet readily available, the current development of the subject has to
be examined; the results of past achievements can be applied and
hopefully improvements can be made.

13.2 MANUFACTURING AND MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

There are two different understandings of the term 'manufacturing',

and thus 'manufacturing system'. In a broad sense, manufacturing is
understood as a series of activities including customer need recognition,
design, material selection, planning, material transformation processes,
quality assurance, and logistics management (Hitomi, 1994). In a narrow
sense, manufacturing may only mean material transformation processes,
which are shop floor activities, sometimes called the production system
(Amstead, Ostwald and Begeman, 1987). Due to the different definitions
of manufacturing, manufacturing systems have correspondingly been
defined differently. According to the broader sense of manufacturing,
manufacturing systems are groups of activities that fulfill the essential
functions of manufacturing. Therefore manufacturing systems should
not only mean fabrication and assembly systems but also should include
the entire spectrum of manufacturing activities such as the definition of
customers' needs, product design, production planning, distribution,
service logistics, and so on. This understanding of manufacturing
systems is adopted throughout the whole chapter. There are different
names or types of manufacturing systems such as the flexible manu-
facturing system (FMS), flexible assembly system (FAS), cellular manu-
facturing system (CMS) and computer-integrated manufacturing system
(CIMS). Each system has a different scope. For instance, FMS covers
fabrication and assembly activities while FAS only covers assembly
activities. CMS is very similar to FMS, and places its emphasis on the
cellular design of systems.
FMS, FAS or CMS alone cannot be considered as a manufacturing
system in the broader, first sense mentioned above; they only focus on
the material flow and process aspect. In contrast, computer-integrated
manufacturing systems integrate all the activities or system components.
In other words, manufacturing systems in this context mean a kind of
CIMS. In an integrated manufacturing system, Hitomi (1994) has