A model for duplicating bottleneck machines in the presence of budgetary limitations in cellular manufacturing

The duplication of bottleneck machines is an important decision a parts-manufacturing company has to deal with after the part-machine assignments to manufacturing cells are determined. The reason being, in the logn run, significant savings in material handling costs due to parts generating intercell moves can be realized. Although there have been studies undertaken in the area of cellular manufacturing which have addressed the process of duplicaton, most have not considered the economies of production in light of the associated costs. In this paper, a realistic two-phase methodology has been presented to model the duplication process taking into account the sequence of operations of parts and budgetary limitations faced by the company. The model has been applied to an example problem and the results obtained have been justified at various budgetary levels.