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Designing the shop-floor for cellular manufacturing (CTI 3345.1)

Researchers:

Partners:

Institute for operations research, Zürich (Prof. Lüthi, Leader), Institute of Work Psychology, (Prof. Grote), CIM Center Aargau (CAG), ESEC SA,
CH-Cham and four swiss and german industrial enterprises

Financed by:

CTI (CTI 3345. 1)

Motivation:

Cellular manufacturing increases internal information and material networks in the enterprises. These networks allow automation of not only production processes, but also planning tasks. The automation of planning tasks in a work-system, however, should combine the worker's specific skills with the power of technology. Together, they should be enabled to act as a good team, to support each other in their power, and to compensate for each other's weaknesses. Hence, an integrated view is required that considers (and optimizes) worker, technology, and organizational structure (WTO) of a work system as a unit.

The objectives of the project:

The project aims to find new avenues that lead to an integrated design of the shop floor, based on the integrated WTO approach. Therefore, the project focused on finding and applying methods to analyze the shop floor's environment, its organizational aspects, and logistics. Based on these results the demands of market, customer and internal organization of structure and processes are deduced.

Result:

The results of the project were published in February 1999 as final report. It gives a detailed view on various aspects of designing the shop floor, starting from external impact on the shop floor to internal potential. Several tools and methods are described which aid recognition of the central questions when designing a shop floor and finding answers to them.