Abstract:
Manufacturing system has the prime responsibility to satisfy customer demand in the form of
high quality, low-cost products and short delivery time. However, to gain the competitive
advantage, technology should have to be adopted in the production processes of Ethiopia
manufacturing firms. By using old technology in their manufacturing system Akaki Basic
Metals Industry is under the problems like poor product quality, poor flexibility and longer
manufacturing lead time. The objective of this thesis is to design and analyze Flexible
Manufacturing Cell with semiautomatic material handling system for machining shop of
ABMI in order to improve productivity of the company. Both primary and secondary data were
used to identify the current production condition and assess the design and analysis of flexible
manufacturing cell respectively. After finishing the design of Flexible Manufacturing Cell a
model was developed in ARENA simulation software by using flowchart modules and data
modules. The results of simulation in this thesis was focused on three performance measures
of flexible manufacturing cell such as manufacturing lead time, production rate and machine
utilization. Therefore applying the flexible manufacturing cell to the machining shop of Akaki
Basic Metals Industry can reduce manufacturing lead time by 71.20% and increase the
productivity of the company from 4.70pc/hr to 18.95pc/hr. The flexibility of proposed Flexible
Manufacturing Cell that is performing different operation on sigle machine with automatic tool
changer, small setup time and transfer time is also the factor that considered in this thesis.
Generally the result of the simulation shows that Flexible Manufacturing Cell can change the
situation of Akaki Basic Metals Industry and making it more flexible, more economical, more
competitive in the market by meeting the customer requirements on delivery date, quality of
the product and the ablity of handling more new products.
