Fractal layout for job shops
Abstract
The fractal layout allocates the workstations for processes roughly equally across fractal cells. Fractal cells may be viewed as regions within the job shop layout, similar in machine composition to the whole. An advantage resulting from such all allocation is flexibility in production because each cell can produce nearly every product. The number of workstations required also approaches the minimum found with functional organizations because stations are not dedicated to a product or group. Still, the spatial distribution of workstations for different processes that results from placing some in each cell keeps travel and material handling burdens in fractal designs nearly as low as those of product organizations. There are three major components to this study: (1) Introduction to the fractal organization. This consists of the isolation of the building blocks of fractal layout and identification of design tasks necessary for implementation. (2) Development of an integrated design methodology. The components involved are capacity planning, cell creation, flow assignment, cell layout, and global layout. (3) Quantitative evaluation of the fractal layout in contrast to process, group, and holographic layouts. Here, all four approaches were tested on seven cases extracted from the facility layout literature or practice.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Rardin, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Industrial engineering|Operations research
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