Multi-period planning and uncertainty issues in cellular manufacturing: a review and future directions

In this paper we review research that has been done to address cellular manufacturing under conditions of multi-period planning horizons, with demand and resource uncertainties. Most traditional cell formation procedures ignore any changes in demand over time caused by product redesign and uncertainties due to volume variation, part mix variation, and resource unreliability. However in today's business environment, product life cycles are short, and demand volumes and product mix can vary frequently. Thus cell design needs to address these issues. It is only recently that researchers have been modelling uncertainty and multi-period issues. In this paper we conduct a comprehensive review of the work that addresses these issues. We present mathematical programming formulations as well as a taxonomy of existing models. Finally we suggest some directions for future research.