APPLICATION OF FAFF FOR THE DESIGN OF PART FAMILIES IN AN AUTOMATED COMPANY – A CASE STUDY

Abstract

When machine cells could be made out of general CNC machines with appropriate tooling, group technology is then faced with the task of generating part families without looking at the concurrent formation of machine cells.  In these situations the parts alone need be grouped into families based on their design attributes called features. This paper presents an application for part family formation, in an engineering company. The methodology applied here is: FAFF (Family Formation by Features) - for the formation of part families in group technology, based on the similarity of part features. The results obtained are found more satisfactory.