The use of similarity coefficients in production flow analysis

Abstract

In production flow analysis, routings are the basic data from which interrelations between operations in a functionally structured production system may be found. A quantitative analysis of these interrelations permits operations to be grouped into cells in such a way that interdependencies between cells fulfill certain conditions. One possibility of describing interrelations between operations is by using similarity coefficients. The definition of a similarity coefficient determines the specific cell structure based upon its application. Several definitions of similarity coefficients are proposed and their application for the design of cell structures is demonstrated.