Abstract

VILARINHO, Pedro M.  and  GUIMARAES, Rui Campos. A Facility Layout Design Support System. Inv. Op. [online]. 2003, vol.23, n.2, pp.145-161. ISSN 0874-5161.

The design of facility layouts involves a decision process which, in general, due to its complexity, has to be decomposed into several sub-problems, namely: the selection of the most adequate manufacturing processes, the planning of equipment and labour requirements, the allocation of manufacturing operations to machines, the grouping of machines into sections (cells or departments), the selection of handling equipment, the specification of the work-in-process parking areas and the definition of the location of machines and sections on the manufacturing plant. In this paper, this overall decision process is analysed and the conceptual framework of a system aimed at supporting some of the stages of such a process is described.

Keywords : Facilities layout design; Cellular Manufacturing Systems; Decision support systems.

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