Praxis Business School

Assignment On
Artificial Neural Networks and its role in manufacturing

A Report

Submitted to

Prof. Prithwis Mukherjee

In partial fulfillment of the requirement of the course

Business Information System

15th November 2010

By

Ritaban Datta(B09017)
Abstract:
Artificial Neural Network, a distributed information processing system that simulate the biological learning
processes has been a successful tool in solving nonlinear problems. Its application domain ranges from
manufacturing scheduling, demand forecasting, financial decision making and share-market predictions to
biological sectors for analyzing human nature and behavior. This article emphasizes on the role of neural
network on a specific manufacturing problem (Cellular Manufacturing) and analyses the research trend
and improvements achieved over the years, thus portraying its capability and impact in complex nonlinear
problem solving and identifying its necessity in near future in various domains to facilitate economic
growth and prosperity.

1. Introduction

1.1Over View of Group Technology/ Cellular manufacturing systems

Group Technology (GT) is an approach to manufacturing and engineering management. It capitalizes on
underlying similarities in products and activities, thereby managing diversity. GT can be defined as a
manufacturing philosophy identifying similar parts and grouping them together into families to take
advantage of their similarities in manufacturing and design. Cellular manufacturing (CM) is an application
of the GT philosophy in manufacturing. Cellular Manufacturing is concerned with the creation and
operation of manufacturing cells which are dedicated to the production of a set of part families. In
response to demand in market place, discrete manufacturing firms need to adopt batch type
manufacturing for incorporating continuous and rapid changes in manufacturing to gain edge over
competitors. There is an increasing trend toward achieving higher level of integration between design and
manufacturing functions in industries to make batch manufacturing more efficient and productive. The
cost of manufacturing is inversely proportional to batch size and the batch size determines the
productivity in batch shop production environment. However in real time environment, the batch size of
the components is often small which leads to frequent changeovers, larger machine idleness and hence,
lesser productivity. To alleviate these problems, “Cellular Manufacturing Systems” (CMS) can be
implemented to accommodate small batches without loosing much of production run time. Cellular
manufacturing is an application of group technology (GT) in which similar parts are identified and grouped
together in order to take advantage of their similarities in design and production. Similar parts are
arranged into part families and each part family possesses similar design and manufacturing
characteristics. Cellular manufacturing is a great example of mixed model production. Cellular
manufacturing needs to resolve two tasks while being implemented. The first task is to identify the part
families and the next task is to cluster the production machines into machine cells known as cell formation
(CF). GT ideas were first systematically presented by Burbidge following the pioneering work of
Mitrofanov in U.S.S.R. Burbidge developed the concept of production flow analysis and successfully
implemented it in industries. After this, many countries started following GT concepts in their
manufacturing lines. Researchers started to develop various methods like similarity coefficient method,
graph theoretic approaches and array based methods in this field. In this trend, modeling of CMS through
mathematical programming was started to incorporate more real life constraints on the problem. Later
researchers started developing heuristics and meta-heuristics to explore the best optimal solutions for the
CF problems.

1.2 Definition

Group technology (GT) can be defined as a manufacturing philosophy identifying similar parts and
grouping them together to take advantage of their similarities in manufacturing and design. Cellular
manufacturing (CM) is an application of Group Technology and has emerged as a promising alternative
manufacturing system. Cellular Manufacturing could be characterised as a hybrid system linking the
advantages of both the jobbing (flexibility) and mass (efficient flow and high production rate) production
approaches. Cellular Manufacturing involves the creation and operation of manufacturing cells. Parts are
grouped into part families and machines into cells. The aim of CM is to reduce setup and flow times and
therefore to reduce inventory and market response times. Setup times are reduced
by using part-family tooling and sequencing, whereas flow times are reduced by minimizing setup and
move times, wait times for moves and by using small transfer batches. Moreover, as per a survey by
Cellular Manufacturing, it is promoted as the primary factor for the simplification of production planning
and control procedures. The design of cellular manufacturing systems has been called cell formation
(CF). Given a set of part types, processing requirements, part type demand and available resources
(machines, equipment, etc.), a general design of cellular manufacturing consists of the following
approaches: (a) part families are formed according to their processing requirements, (b) machines are
grouped into manufacturing cells, (c) part families are assigned to cells. Depending upon the procedures/
formulations employed to form manufacturing cells and part families, three solution strategies are
identified: (a) part families are formed first and then machines are grouped into cells according to the part
families. This solution strategy is referred to as part-family identification (PFI), (b) manufacturing cells
(grouped machines) are first created based on similarity in part routings and then the parts are allocated
to cells. This solution strategy is referred to as machine groups identification (MGI), (c) part families and
manufacturing cells are formed simultaneously. This is referred to as part families/machine grouping
(PF/MG) solution strategy. Group Technology addresses issues such as Average Lot Size Decreasing,
Part Variety Increasing, Increased Variety of Materials with diverse properties and requirements for closer
Tolerances.

1.3 Benefits:
The advantages derived from cellular manufacturing in comparison with traditional
manufacturing systems in terms of system performance has been studied and summarized as follows:
1. Setup time is reduced : A manufacturing cell is designed to handle parts having similar shapes and
relatively similar sizes. For this reason, many of the parts can employ the same or similar holding devices
(fixtures). Generic fixtures for the part family can be developed so that time required for changing fixtures
and tools is decreased.
2. Lot sizes are reduced : Once setup times are greatly reduced in CM, small lots are possible and
economical. Small lots also smooth production flow.
3. Work-in-process (WIP) and finished goods inventories are reduced : With smaller lot sizes and reduced
setup times, the amount of WIP can be reduced. WIP can be reduced by 50% when the setup time is cut
in half. In addition to reduced setup times and WIP inventory, finished goods inventory is reduced. Instead
of make-to-stock systems with parts either being run at long, fixed intervals or random intervals, the parts
can be produced either just-in-time (JIT) in small lots or at fixed, short intervals.
4. Material handling costs and time are reduced: In CM, each part is processed completely within a single
cell (where possible). Thus, part travel time and distance between cells is minimal.
5. A reduction in flow time is obtained: Reduced material handling time and reduced setup time greatly
reduce flow time.
6. Tool requirements are reduced : Parts produced in a cell are of similar shape, size, and composition.
Thus, they often have similar tooling requirements.
7. A reduction in space required : Reductions in WIP, finished goods inventories, and lot sizes lead to less
space required.
8. Throughput times are reduced : In a job shop, parts are transferred between machines in batches.
However, in CM each part is transferred immediately to the next machine after it has been processed.
Thus, the waiting time is reduced substantially.
9. Product quality is improved. Since parts travel from one station to another as single units, they are
completely processed in a small area. The feedback is immediate and the process can be stopped when
things go wrong.
10. Better overall control of operations. In a job shop, parts may have to travel through the entire shop.
Scheduling and material control are complicated. In CM, the manufacturing facility is broken down into
manufacturing cells and each part travels with a single cell, resulting in easier scheduling and control.

1.4 Overview of artificial neural networks:

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are distributed information processing systems that simulate the
biological learning processes. They basically consist of different components, e.g. processing unit (PU),
connections, propagation rule, activation/ transfer function and learning rule. The PUs are densely
interconnected through directed links (connections). PUs take one or more input
values, combine them into a single value using propagation rule, then transform them into an output value
through an activation/transfer function. Complex networks can be constructed by connecting a number of
PUs together. The simplest network is a group of PUs arranged in a single layer. Multi-layer networks
may be formed by simply cascading a group of single layers. A neural network learns from
a set of training patterns by generalizing the features within the training patterns. After sufficient
generalization, the network stores these features internally in its architecture. After the training, the neural
network should be able to recognize and classify input patterns that it has never seen before. The
learning takes place mainly through the readjustment of the weights using certain learning procedures,
e.g. the delta learning rule, hebbian learning rule and competitive learning rule have been developed.
Supervised learning requires the pairing of each input value with a target value representing the desired
output and a `teacher’ who provides error information. In unsupervised learning, the training set consists
of input vectors only. The output is determined by the network during the course of training. The
unsupervised learning procedures construct internal models that capture regularities in their input values
without receiving any additional information. Different types of neural network models have been
developed in the neural network literature. These models are characterized by their properties, viz.
the structure of the network (topology), how and what the network computes (computational property) and
how the network learns to compute (learning or training property). The number of layers, number of
neurons in each layer and the weights to be attached to the connections can be decided in such a way
that they give the best possible set of data. The massive number of processing units connected with links
gives the neural networks the ability to learn complex patterns in the given data and generalize the
learned information. Their fault tolerant nature gives the network the ability to work with incomplete
information. Their real-time capabilities make the ANN a support tool for creating an intelligent
manufacturing environment in real life. These abilities have made ANN one of the relevant tools for
solving the part-machine grouping problem. The next section gives an overview on the applications of
different neural network models for the part-machine grouping problem.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Methods used for solving the GT problem

The problem of grouping parts and machines into independent cells was first addressed by Burbidge
(1963). He suggested a method, production flow analysis (PFA), to identify part-machine groups. Given
the complexity of the problem, it has received a great deal of attention and several other procedures have
been developed in the GT/CM literature. One common drawback of these procedures is that the
introduction of new parts (machines) in the system required the algorithm to be rerun with the whole set of
data. Also, these procedures have assumed that a given part (machine) can be a member of only one
part-family (machine-cell). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a set of new tools, e.g. neural networks and
fuzzy models were introduced in the GT/CM literature which have overcome the above limitations
together with other advantages. Taking these recent developments into consideration, approaches to the
part machine grouping problem can be classified based on the type of computing, viz. soft-computing and
traditional hardcomputing. In traditional hard-computing, the prime desiderata are precision,
certainty and rigour. By contrast, the point of departure in soft computing is the thesis that precision and
certainty are not always possible, and hence computation, reasoning and decision-making should exploit
wherever possible - the tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty. This idea of exploiting the tolerance for
imprecision and uncertainty underlies the human ability to understand, learn, and recognize and classify
patterns/data. In the last three decades much work has been undertaken seeking effective methods for
the CF problem. A first attempt to classify the approaches, results in the following three categories:
Informal methods, Part coding analysis methods and Production based methods. Informal methods or
visual methods or simply ‘‘eye-balling” methods rely on the visual identification of the correspondent part
families and machine cells. This methodology is trivial only when the number of parts and machines is
small or could be larger but with considerable flows. Otherwise, the identification task becomes
impossible. In part coding analysis (PCA) methodologies the design characteristic of the parts has an
important role in the formation of part families. These methodologies use a coding system to assign
numerical weights to part characteristics and identify families using some classification scheme. PCA-
based systems are traditionally design oriented or shape-based, therefore they are ideal for component
variety reduction. The core classification is production based methods, which can further be classified as
follows: Cluster analysis Graph partitioning approaches. Mathematical programming methods. Heuristic
and Met heuristic algorithms. Artificial intelligence methodologies. At this juncture, the main components
of soft-computing are neural networks, fuzzy models, genetic algorithms and probabilistic reasoning.
Fuzzy models are primarily concerned with imprecision. Neural networks and genetic algorithms are
concerned with learning, recognizing and incomplete information processing. Probabilistic reasoning is
concerned with uncertainty. Borrowing this idea from computer science literature, part-machine grouping
procedures can be grouped under two major categories, viz. (i) approaches based on soft-computing, and
(ii) approaches based on traditional hard-computing (figure 1). Approaches based on soft-computing
include neural network methods, fuzzy models and genetic algorithms to part-machine grouping.
Approaches based on traditional hard-computing include similarity-based clustering methods, graph
theoretic approaches, heuristic approaches (e.g. rank order clustering) and mathematical programming
approaches. A cellular layout is shown in figure -2

Maximize similarity among parts, Minimize distance , Maximize similarities , Minimize cost & Bloc
Diagram , Maximize similarity among parts & machines, Minimize number of exceptional elements,
Minimize total extra cost, Maximize Bond Energy & Block, To minimize the number of 0s inside the
diagonal blocks (i.e., voids) are few of the objectives in Group Technology found in literature.
2.2 Neural network approaches to the GT problem

The neural network approach has been the subject of intensive study by interdisciplinary researchers for
a long time. Though neural networks have been successfully applied in a variety of fields, their use in
cellular manufacturing problems started in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Recognizing ANN’s pattern
recognition ability, several researchers began to investigate neural network methods for the part-machine
grouping problem. Parts’ processing requirements as input. One stream of research has used parts’
processing requirements as an input to the neural network to find part-machine grouping. The various
research works under this category can be subdivided into two groups, based on the type of learning
unsupervised and supervised neural network. In the early 90’s supervised neural networks were taken
into considerations but later due to lack of training data, unsupervised networks became an obvious
choice. Finally a chronological review is given to portray the influence, need and efficiency of neural
networks to solve group technology problems. The basic components of a neural network is shown in fig
3.Fig 4 shows the different neural network models frequently used in the last two decades and their usage
percentage based on the literature survey.

Kohonen Quantized and Fuzzy Self

Fuzzy Min–Max
self- Fluctuated Organizing
Neural Network
organizingHopfield Neural feature map
9%
map Networks 4%
networks combined with
4% Tabu search Transiently
4% Adaptive
Resonance Chaotic neural
Theory Fuzzy ART network
25% Neural Network 4%
Carpenter
Grossberg 21%
Network
4%
Graph Stochastic
Neural Self Organizing Competitive Neural Network
approach Feature Maps LearningModel model
Fig 4: Different types of neural models and their usage percentage over4%
4% 8% 9% the years

2.3 A Chronological Tabulation of neural network approaches in GT.

The alphabets below are used in the following table to represent the different types
of neural network models:
A: Fuzzy Self Organizing feature map
B: Fuzzy Min–Max Neural Network
C: Transiently Chaotic neural network
D: Fuzzy ART Neural Network
E: Competitive Learning Model
F: Self Organizing Feature Maps(SOFM)
G: Stochastic Neural Network model
H: Adaptive Resonance Theory ( ART-2 )
I: Graph Neural approach
J: Carpenter Grossberg Network
K: Adaptive Resonance Theory ( ART-1)
L: Quantized and Fluctuated Hopfield Neural Networks combined with Tabu search
M: Kohonen self-organizing map networks
Fig 5: improvement in computational time over the years
Conclusion:
This paper presented an analytical review of the neural network based approaches in CF problem since
the last two decades. A significant list of research papers were identified, analyzed and classified. The
study helped recognize the influence of artificial neural network approaches in cell formation problem.The
in-depth chronological analysis helped to identify the trend of research, improvements over the years and
the capability of ANN approaches to handle complex nonlinear problem. Its innate ability to handle such
complex problems facilitate its extensive use in near future, may that be in manufacturing domain,
marketing or financial decision making.
References
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