A study of labor assignment flexibility in cellular manufacturing systems Viviana I. Cesanı ´ a, * , Harold J. Steudel b a Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagu ¨ez, PR 00681, USA b Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA Received 1 April 2001; revised 1 December 2002; accepted 1 April 2003 Abstract The objective of this research is to study labor flexibility in cellular manufacturing systems characterized by intra-cell operator’s mobility. The special focus of the investigation is to explore the impact that using different labor allocation strategies have on system performance. This internal aspect of labor flexibility is referred to as labor assignment flexibility. Labor strategies are classified according to the type of machine-operator assignments including dedicated (when only one operator is responsible for a machine or group or machines), shared (when more than one operator is responsible for a machine or a group of machines) or combined assignments (when the operator has both dedicated and shared machine assignments). This work proposes a classification scheme and a framework that is composed by a set of propositions that evolved from an empirical study and includes the concepts of workload balancing, workload sharing, and the presence of bottleneck operations. The suitability of the framework is tested using simulation modeling in an actual cell implementation. The experimental results based on labor strategies using two and three operators show that the balance in the workload assigned to the individual operators and the level of shared workload are significant factors in determining the performance of the system. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Cellular manufacturing systems; Labor limited systems; Labor flexibility; Assignment strategies; Workload balancing; Workload sharing; Bottleneck operations 0360-8352/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cie.2003.04.001 Computers & Industrial Engineering 48 (2005) 571–591 www.elsevier.com/locate/dsw * Corresponding author. Tel.: C1 787 265 3819; fax: C1 787 265 3820. E-mail address: vcesani@uprm.edu (V.I. Cesanı ´).