DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING CELL CASE OF AKAKI BASIC METALS INDUSTRY

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.