Design method of products processes for group technology

In contrast to the traditional manufacturing system, where the basic features are low product variety and mass production, recent manufacturing environment is characterized by shorter product life cycles, constantly diminishing batch sizes while the variety of product types and models continues to increase. In high-variety manufacturing , in spite of applying modern management techniques, setup time still plays an important part in the production cycle time. Product development teams use many methods and tools for design, test, and manufacture a new or improved product. Design for manufacturing methodologies are used to improve a product's manufacturability. For high-variety production the cumulative amount of setup time results from the number of changeovers. To shorten the production time and therefore cost the methods of group technology (GT) are used. This paper presents a method of increasing the manufacturability of elements produced in GT. The method was validated in the conditions of best practice production for high-variety production.