formation and capacity adjustment

Received 02.01.2010; published in revised form 01.04.2010 Manufacturing and processing AbstrAct Purpose: Improving the productivity of a large manufacturing firm through development and implementation of a group technology model in a real manufacturing environment. This incorporates classification of parts, coding of parts and par families, formation of machine cells, and minimization of machine idle times through machine cell capacity adjustment. Design/methodology/approach: An algorithm has been developed for classification of all the parts into part families on the basis of manufacturing similarities. This formed 144 par families for more than 7500 differen