Cellular manufacturing design 1996–2021: a review and introduction to applications of Industry 4.0

Abstract

As globalisation and competition grow rapidly, adopting a flexible manufacturing philosophy becomes more critical for manufacturers. Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS) is among one of the most favourable ones which has been deeply studied in academia since this philosophy was coined in 1925. To design the manufacturing system efficiently and effectively, the management team needs to have a comprehensive representation of the definitions, classifications, solution approach to cellular manufacturing design problems. In this study, exact methods, heuristic approaches, metaheuristic techniques, and artificial intelligence strategies for cellular manufacturing design are reviewed. A comparison of solution approaches is discussed and based on this analysis, some suggestions for future research are proposed. Moreover, we tried to highlight the importance of investigating sustainability decisions related to CMS problems, and integration of supply chain decisions with CMS decisions which have not been sufficiently studied to identify a research direction for researchers to model and analyse those issues. Finally, we briefly discuss the placement of CMS as one of the major production systems in the industry 4.0 evolution paradigm. Reviewing the adoption of industry 4.0 techniques by CMS sheds light on the contribution of methodological approaches in transition to intelligent CMS.

KEYWORDS:

• Cellular
• cell formation
• review
• Industry 4.0
• supply chain
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roohollah YounesSinaki

Roohollah YounesSinaki is an LEO lecturer III of Supply Chain Management in School of Management at University of Michigan-Flint and a Ph.D. candidate in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Ohio University where he also obtained his M.Sc. in ISE from. His primary research is focused on supply chain and operations management particularly sustainable operations, and manufacturing system design. Roohollah is also highly interested in the application of machine learning and statistical modelling tools to solve complex problems related to social, environmental, and economic aspects of supply chain systems. His scholarly work has been published in journals like Computers & Industrial Engineering (C&IE), Safety Science, Energies, and Procedia Manufacturing. Before joining Ohio University in 2015, he worked as a project control analyst and quality assurance for 4 years.

Azadeh Sadeghi

Azadeh Sadeghi is an assistant professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Michigan-Flint. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University. Her research concerns with operations research tools to optimise processes within a system. Her research interests are disaster supply chain, supply chain resilience, and manufacturing-distribution problems in the supply chain. She uses mathematical optimisation, discrete event simulation, machine learning algorithms, and meta-heuristic algorithms to allocate scarce resources. She has published in journals such as Computers & Industrial Engineering (C&IE), Safety Science, and Expert Systems with Applications.

Hadi Mosadegh

Hadi Mosadegh is an assistant professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic). Prior to this position, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Ontario Tech University in 2019–2020 and Visiting scholar at Ohio University in 2015–2016. He holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology. His research interests are applied operations research, industry 4.0, supply chain and operations management, and assembly line balancing and sequencing. His work has been published in journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Computers & Operations Research, Applied Soft Computing, and Resources Policy.

Najat Almasarwah

Najat Almasarwah is an assistant professor in the Industrial Systems Department at Mutah University. Her main interests are applied scheduling, manufacturing system design particularly cellular manufacturing, assembly line, intelligent systems with a human component, Industry 4.0, pallet loading problems, logistics, applied optimisation, sustainability, genetic algorithms, cryptocurrency, and complex systems. Almasarwah has published several papers in journals and conference proceedings and made conference presentations. She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio in 2020. She obtained a master’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University and B.Sc. degree in Industrial Systems Engineering from Mutah University, Jordan.

Gursel Suer

Gürsel A. Süer was a professor in the ISE Department at Ohio University. He obtained his BSIE and MSIE degrees from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and PhD in IE from Wichita State University. He was on the editorial board of various journals. He co-chaired two Computers and Industrial Engineering Conferences (1997, 2005) and ANNIE Conference (2009). He also initiated Group Technology/Cellular Manufacturing Conferences which were held in Puerto Rico, Ohio, Netherlands, and Japan. He organised a workshop in CM/SERU in Ohio in 2016 and was the Conference Program Chair for FAIM (2018) and ICPR25 (2019) Conferences. Most of his research was motivated by his experiences and observations in industrial settings. His main interests were applied scheduling, manufacturing system design particularly cellular manufacturing, parallel assembly lines and SERU, Industry 4.0, global supply chain, distribution centre design, logistics, applied optimisation, decision making, genetic algorithms and hybrid systems, intelligent systems with human component, modelling competitive business strategies. He co-edited a Cellular Manufacturing book with Dr. Mitsuo Gen, edited 8 Conference Proceedings and 6 Special Issues with different journals. He published over 90 journal papers, more than 15 book chapters, over 100 conference papers and made more than 75 presentations and delivered key notes in multiple conferences. He was a member of IFPR since 2019. He passed away in July 2021.