Design of cellular manufacturing system including group schduling

The long-term goals of a manufacturing enterprise are to stay in business make profits. To achieve these goals, it isnecessary for these enterprises to understand the businessenvironment. . The twenty-first century business environment can be characterized by expanding globalcompetition and customer individualism leading to high-variety of products which are low in demand. In the 1970s the cost of products usedto be the main lever for obtaining competitive advantage. In the 1980s quality superseded costand became an important competitivedimension. Now lowunit-cost and high quality products no longer solely define the, competitive advantage for most manufacturingenterprises. Today, the customer takes both minimum cost and high quality for grant. Factors .such as deliveryperformance, custornization of products and environmental issues such as waste generation are assuming a predominantrole in defini-ng the success of manufacturing enterprises interms of increased market share and profitabi I ity. The question is: what can be done under these changingcircumstances to stay in business and retain competitiveadvantage?What is needed is the right manufacturing strategy tomeet the challenges of today’s and future markets. In doingso, a manufacturing organization not only has to understandwhat customers, want, it .also has to develop internal mechanisms to respond to the changes demanded by whatthe customer wants.’ This requires a paradigm shin in everything that factories do. That means making use of