The Problem of Production Process Arrangement : Optimization Method for Arrangement Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, a tendency towards varied and short-life merchandise has led to progress in Factory Automation (FA) in industry. The problem of plant and process layout is one of the most significant and involved engineering problems in FA. This paper describes a new method for solving the layout problem. We discuss the arrangement of manufacturing processes in which manufacturing goods are produced by repeating basic processes. The most suitable arrangement in manufacturing processes is investigated to make use of Graph Theory. We use co-factors of graph theory and the adjacent matrix to solve the problem efficiently. The applications of this method to several examples of layout problems are shown and the effectiveness of this method is demonstrated for a LSI product.