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Reports the development and successful implementation of a computer‐integrated production and operations management system (POM), encompassing schedule activities such as aggregate production plan, master production schedule and material requirements plan, and capacity activities such as financial plan, resource requirements plan, rough‐cut capacity plan and capacity requirements plan, at the planning level. POM’s icon‐menu driven system which associates icons with decision model spreadsheets makes it very user‐friendly, and facilitates the integration of decisions encountered by industrial/ manufacturing engineers and operations managers.

Grouping parts into families which can be produced by a cluster of machine cells is the cornerstone of cellular manufacturing, which in turn is the building block for flexible manufacturing systems. Cellular manufacturing is a group technology (GT) concept that has recently attracted the attention of manufacturing firms operating in a jobshop environment to consider redesigning their manufacturing systems so as to take advantage of increased throughput, and reductions in work‐in‐progress, set‐up time, and lead times; leading to product quality and customer satisfaction. Presents a similarity order clustering technique for the machine cell formation problem. The procedure is compared with many existing procedures using eight well‐known problems from the literature. The results show that the proposed procedure, which is attractive due to its simplicity, compares well with existing procedures and should be useful to practitioners and researchers.

Describes flow‐shop scheduling problems and an interactive graphical flow‐shop manufacturing scheduling system (FSMS) developed to handle any number of jobs and machines. Outlines the methodical approach of using scheduling tools, such as lower bound, automatic generation of near‐optimal system sequences and schedule optimization in which the user is guided in determining optimal sequence, to cut scheduling time and make the scheduling system flexible. Outputs are in the form of Gantt charts. The graphical capability can be a very useful tool for decision makers such as production and operations managers who often encounter many day‐to‐day scheduling problems and challenges.

The purpose of the experimental investigation was to optimize the process parameters of the fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique. The optimization of the process was performed to identify the relationship between the chosen factors and the tensile strength of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and carbon fiber polylactic acid (PLA) thermoplastic material, FDM printed specimens. The relationship was demonstrated by using the linear experimental model analysis, and a prediction expression was established. The developed prediction expression can be used for the prediction of tensile strength of selected thermoplastic materials at a 95% confidence level.

The Taguchi L9 experimental methodology was used to plan the total number of experiments to be performed. The process parameters were chosen as three at three working levels. The working range of chosen factors was the printing speed (60, 80 and 100mm/min), 40%, 60% and 80% as the infill density and 0.1mm, 0.2mm and 0.3mm as the layer thickness. The fused deposition modeling process parameters were optimized to get the maximum tensile strength in FDM printed ABS and carbon fiber PLA thermoplastic material specimens.

The optimum condition was achieved by the process optimization, and the desired results were obtained. The maximum desirability was achieved as 0.98 (98%) for the factors, printing speed 100mm/min, infill density 60mm and layer thickness 0.3mm. The strength of the ABS specimen was predicted to be 23.83MPa. The observed strength value was 23.66MPa. The maximum desirability was obtained as 1 (100%) for the factors, printing speed 100mm/min, infill density 60mm and layer thickness 0.2mm. The strength of the carbon fiber PLA specimen was predicted to be 26.23MPa, and the obtained value was 26.49MPa.

The research shows the useful process parameters and their suitable working conditions to print the tensile specimens of the ABS and carbon fiber PLA thermoplastics by using the fused deposition modeling technique. The process was optimized to identify the most influential factor, and the desired optimum condition was achieved at which the maximum tensile strength was reported. The produced prediction expression can be used to predict the tensile strength of ABS and carbon fiber PLA filaments.

The results obtained from the experimental investigation are useful to get an insight into the FDM process and working limits to print the parts by using the ABS and carbon fiber PLA material for various industrial and structural applications.

The results will be useful in choosing the suitable thermoplastic filament for the various prototyping and structural applications. The products that require freedom in design and are difficult to produce by most of the conventional techniques can be produced at low cost and in less time by the fused deposition modeling technique.

The process optimization shows the practical exposures to state an optimum working condition to print the ABS and carbon fiber PLA tensile specimens by using the FDM technique. The carbon fiber PLA shows better strength than ABS thermoplastic material.