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The decomposition of production facilities into efficient cells is one of the areas attracting increasing research attention due to the performance benefits which cellular manufacturing offers. One of the problems associated with cell formation is the restrictive character of the existing task formalization models resulting in most cases from the use of single machine tool routeings in representing the component requirements. In contrast, the industrial reality provides a more complex picture with multiple choice of processing routeings in terms of available machine alternatives which need to be considered in order to achieve an “optimum” cellular decomposition of manufacturing facilities. Presents a facility decomposition approach based on multiple choice of processing alternatives for each component. The decision making is based on a generic description of the component processing routeings using unique machine capability patterns ‐ “resource elements”. Manufacturing cells are formed using concurrent fuzzy clustering methodology and a validation procedure for selection of the “optimum” facility partition.

Reports on ongoing research in developing generative process planning systems. Presents a feature‐based model for describing component geometry and its structural aspects (connectivity) and a hierarchical structure for form features definition and classification, as well as methods for representing the capabilities of machine tools. These models form the basis for decision making in the prototype process planning system GENPLAN. As an example, reports on how the models are being used for reasoning about component geometry and a linguistic approach that is adopted for machine tool selection in process planning.