ABSTRACT
All the improvement tools in the lean toolbox, cellular manufacturing is perhaps one of the most powerful. It enables smaller lot production, more visible flow, quality improvements, reduced work in progress, shorter lead times, and simplifies the implementation of product wheel scheduling and pull replenishment systems. However, it has been largely overlooked by lean implementers working in the process industries. A few process companies implementing lean learned years ago that many of the benefits of cellular manufacturing realized in parts manufacture can be achieved without actual equipment relocation. Others are more recently beginning to write about cellular concepts for process plants. Process plants usually require this array of equipment to handle the high volume of material to be produced. Cellular manufacturing was applied to a synthetic rubber production process and worked out more advantageously than usual because a configuration was found where the takt, capacities, and numbers of pieces of process equipment could be almost equally balanced.
