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Date Available

12-7-2011

Year of Publication

2002

Document Type

Thesis

College

Engineering

Department/School/Program

Manufacturing Systems Engineering

Faculty

Jon C.Yingling

Abstract

Lean Manufacturing has proven to be a very successful strategy for achieving production efficiencies. The basic elements of lean manufacturing are flow and pull. The traditional methods for establishing flow and pull do not fit well in the realm of high variety low volume manufacturing systems. This thesis provides a general framework for establishing flow and pull in high variety low volume manufacturing systems, through the concept of hybrid flow layouts. The existing analytical procedure for forming hybrid flow layouts is described and a new heuristic procedure, that overcomes some of the limitations of the existing procedure, is proposed. The performance of the new procedure in comparison to the existing procedure is illustrated using a real world case study. Finally, certain practical implementation issues that affect the formation of hybrid flow layouts are provided.

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