The Benefits and Limitations of Manufacturing Cells

Michel Baudin’s book, Working with Machines (2007), discusses several different approaches to implementing cellular manufacturing; one of the most common is the kaizen event. While kaizen refers to the Japanese notion of constant improvement and has many business applications, kaizen events are short bursts of intense, permanent change. Cellular manufacturing is a manufacturing process that produces families of parts within a single line or cell of machines operated by machinists who work only within the line or cell.

Continuous Improvement

The cellular manufacturing system, often called lean manufacturing, is a fairly recent development in global manufacturing processes. One of the first, and today, the most common cellular, or lean manufacturing systems is the Kaizen system. Originally conceived by the Toyota Corporation in Japan, Kaizen utilizes technology and cellular manufacturing to reduce the waste of time, effort, money, and resources in the production process. A cellular manufacturing layout is in direct contradiction to the traditional production line.

Focus on Minimizing Waste

Continuous improvement is the cornerstone of long-term success in cellular manufacturing. By regularly reviewing and optimizing the cell’s performance, companies can identify inefficiencies, adapt to changes, and continuously enhance productivity. This layout is used when you want to work around obstructions or irregularities on the shop floor and you still want to implement cellular manufacturing.

Benefits of a Workcell

• Since cellular manufacturing can be easily disrupted by machine breakdown (or the time it takes to repair broken machinery), it is always wise to have replacements on hand and the capability to substitute the broken parts quickly.
• In this context, the terms (semi-autonomous) group work or group production are often used.
• By co-culturing these two hosts, researchers created a microbial cell factory that produces yields of strigolactones over 125 times higher than previous microbial consortiums.
• A flexible manufacturing system utilizes a computer to control the start of work at each machine and to control the transfer of parts from machine to machine.
• If Carl’s company is in a good position to invest heavily in equipment, then his proposal will make more sense.
• Some firms utilize “linked-cell manufacturing,” which is the concept of arranging the manufacturing cells near the assembly cells.

It can prove challenging because, if the same machines are required in different cells, it may result in higher capital requirements. However, the benefits of manufacturing cells—such as higher productivity, better responsiveness to market conditions, and the ability to produce customized goods in small volumes—can more than offset the increased costs. Since the 1920s, when Henry Ford’s assembly line manufacturing opened up an extensive customer base for mass production, the assembly line has gained enormous importance in industrial production.

Putting the lean manufacturing principles into action

• For example, a varied range of automobiles may be designed to use the same chassis, a small number of engine configurations, and a moderate variety of car bodies, each available in a range of colors.
• Modern-day work cells have become well-engineered and valuable components of manufacturing.
• These tools enable the creators of cell structures to allow some uncertainty in what the machine and workers do, when assigning productions to various cells.
• In this context, work enlargement and work enrichment became established as organizational principles.
• Job rotation within the cell introduces variety in work patterns, thereby breaking the monotony (which has been known to cause absenteeism and problems in quality and productivity).
• However, the benefits of manufacturing cells—such as higher productivity, better responsiveness to market conditions, and the ability to produce customized goods in small volumes—can more than offset the increased costs.

It was a step toward streamlining processes, reducing waste, and ensuring a more seamless, cohesive flow of production. Cell workers are encouraged to think creatively about production problems and are expected to arrive at pragmatic solutions to them. While they are free to seek advice from plant management and staff, the identified problems and subsequent analysis, and usually the solutions, are entirely their own. Workers have the authority and are encouraged to implement and follow up on action plans to improve their work. Some managers ask cells to set improvement targets for themselves and measure their performance in comparison to these targets. In manufacturing cell definition addition, workers are given the freedom to plan, coordinate, and control their work within their cell as long as they meet company standards of quality, volume, time, and cost.

If a similar part is found, it may be that a simple modification would produce satisfactory results without the expense of new part design. Similarly, planning the manufacturing of a new part after matching it with an existing part family can eliminate new and costly processing requirements. Rather than processing a batch of components in a workstation simultaneously, cells are usually designed to pass parts through one at a time, i.e. in a one-piece flow. The I-cell, also known as the linear cell, is an arrangement of machines in a linear order. Being one of the simplest of the cellular layouts, this arrangement is the closest to having multiple assembly lines.

Types of cell layouts

Cellular manufacturing evolved from ideas that were first proposed by Ralph Sanders. They then went on to mature into important concepts of lean manufacturing and lean six sigma principles due to their common focus on reducing waste and continually improving production processes. Cellular manufacturing refers to a manufacturing strategy used to arrange different machines functionally in specific geometric layouts and larger functional units known as manufacturing cells to optimize the production process. Applying this idea to manufacturing gives us cellular manufacturing and the concept of creating units called manufacturing cells. These manufacturing cells can be thought of as miniature versions of a plant layout capable of producing a complete product or a product family.