Week 4: Group Technology and Flexible manufacturing.

GROUP TECHNOLOGY
Group technology is a manufacturing technique and philosophy to increase production
efficiency by exploiting the “underlying sameness” of component shape, dimensions, process
route, etc.
WHY GROUP TECHNOLOGY?
1. Average lot size decreasing
2. part variety increasing
3. increased variety of materials
4. with diverse properties
5. requirements for closer
6. Tolerances
 

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a highly automated GT machine cell, consisting of a group or processing workstations (usually CNC machine tools), interconnected by an automated material handling and storage system, and controlled by a distributed computer system.
• The reason the FMS is called flexible is that it is capable of processing a variety of different part styles simultaneously at the various workstations, and the mix of part styles and quantities of production can be adjusted in response to changing demand patterns.
• The FMS is most suited for the mid-variety, mid-volume production range
 

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gtand-fms.pdf (2.37 MB )