Design of an interactive virtual factory using cell formation methodologies

This paper describes an interactive virtual environment for modeling and designing factories and shop floors. The factory building tool is developed as an open architecture in which various modules can be utilized to quickly implement factory design algorithms ranging from plant layout to factory flow analysis. Software modules and utilities have been implemented to allow easy set-up of the visual interface. In this paper this virtual factory is used to implement cellular manufacturing (CM) system. CM has traditionally been a very complicated system to implement in practice. However the productivity rise obtained by the successful implementation of the system has been proved to be immense. Several issues involved in implementing CM within our virtual factory machine modeling and interface designs for defining the cells, are discussed. The mathematical clustering algorithm called Modified Boolean Method was implemented to automatically generate complex virtual environments. The virtual factory makes the process of CM-based factory design a very easy and intuitive process. Virtual factory interface also allows easy reassignment of machines and parts, subcontracting of bottleneck parts and rearranging of machines within the same design environment, making this a productive industrial tool.