Cellular manufacturing: A statistical review of the literature (1965–1995)

This paper is both an extension and an expansion of two earlier studies concerned with the direction of OR/MS research as reported in its archival literature. All of these papers provide a content analysis of the OR/MS archival journals. However, this paper focuses on the entire life-cycle literature of Cellular Manufacturing as a module of OR/MS. It addresses the research strategy employed by, and the theory-vs-applied orientation exhibited by, the authors. In all, 235 articles, starting in 1969, were reviewed and classified on a five-point scale, ranging from pure theory to bonafide applications. Secondly, the articles were classified in terms of seven types of research processes used by authors. Next, statistical correlations were performed relating data from the above classifications. The findings show that the literature is dominated (94 papers, or 40%) by articles classified as pure theory using synthetic ‘data’ and the ripple or incremental process as a basic research strategy. During the first decade of cellular manufacturing research (1969 through 1978), this subset accounted for but 4 out of 42 (or 9.5%) of the papers published, whereas during the most recent decade it accounted for 81 papers (or 47.4%) of the literature. Lastly, the article raises questions about the future of cellular manufacturing research vis-à-vis other related subject matter.