Pipe Piece Family Manufacturing
Abstract
Generally, fabrication of components for ships is planned by addressing ship-systems separately and then considering each component in a system to be unique. Thus, an interim product such as a pipe piece is separately planned and scheduled. As just the engine room of a 20,000 deadweightton ship contains approximately 3,500 pipe-pieces, custom manufacturing all of them involves large volumes of data and inherently poor productivity. Group Technology (GT), a management philosophy, features organizing work so that common solutions are applied to common problems. It is the recognized means for acquiring the benefits of mass production for high variety, mixed quantity products. By identifying similarities in manufacturing problems, different products are grouped for similar processing. A variety of products so grouped to match a set of solutions is called a family. Hence, GT when applied to fabrication work is called Family Manufacturing. Ideally, the various machines needed to fabricate products of a particular family should themselves be grouped as a production line. Thus, instead of operation-by-operation planning as needed for custom manufacturing, all operations that could be performed by a group of machines are regarded as a preplanned single entity. This is called process categorization. Applied in a pipe shop it is called Pipe-piece Family Manufacturing (PPFM). Normally, the total numbers of pipe pieces for each process categorization do not justify redundant equipment installations that would permit every production line to be independently operated. Thus, preplanning for two or more families anticipates that for some operations the production lines merge so that the use of a single machine, e.g., a pipe bender, is fully exploited.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA451968
Entities
People
- L. D. Chirillo