Topics on Quality, Lean

Manufacturing and Productivity

Improvement

CELLULAR
MANUFACTURING
(FLEXIBLE OPERATIONS)

Presented by
JORGE ROS
 Cellular Manufacturing

Cellular Manufacturing is an approach

in which equipment and workstations
necessary to produce a product are
arranged closely together to facilitate
small lot continuous flow production.

The goal is to have the necessary

flexibility to produce a variety of low
demand products, while maintaining
the same productivity obtained with a
large scale production.

Picture from Wikipedia

Traditional Batch Processing
 One Piece Flow

Handling items one at a time eliminates wastes inherent in batch production

and enables a balanced flow of work.
Multi-Process Handling
Multi-functional Workforce
 Zero Op-to-Op Transfer Times

All the operations necessary to produce a component or subassembly

are performed in close proximity. Near zero operation-to-operation
transfer times are achieved.
 Cellular Manufacturing

Cell designers achieve this through modularity

in both process design and product design.

The biggest challenge when implementing

cellular manufacturing in a company is dividing
the entire manufacturing system into cells.

The issues may be conceptually divided in the

"hard" issues of equipment, such as material
flow and layout, and the "soft" issues of
management, such as upskilling and corporate
culture.
 Flow in a U-Cell

Equipment and Workstations used to produce are arranged to facilitate a

continuous production flow in small lots.

OUTPUT
Finished Station 5 Station 4
Goods

Station 3
EXAMPLE Work
Flow

INPUT
(Components Station 1 Station 2
and
Materials)
Example – Single Cell
 Several Operators in Series

In a process with several operators, work is divided in small operations, so

that a group of operators team together to work at the same speed,
dividing the work load among them.
Cellular Lay Out
Combined Cellular Manufacturing
Pitfalls to avoid
Integrating Subassembly into Main Assembly
Implementing Flexible Operations