23rd ABCM International Congress of Mechanical Engineering December 6-11, 2015, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND VIRTUAL CELL LAYOUTS USING PROCESS PLANS WITH ALTERNATIVES BY MEANS OF SIMULATION AND DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS Claudio Decker Junior João Carlos Espíndola Ferreira UFSC - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Departamento de Engenharia Mecanica, GRIMA/GRUCON, Caixa Postal 476, 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil claudio.decker@gmail.com j.c.ferreira@ufsc.br Fernando Martineli Loureiro Guilherme José da Silva UDESC - Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Departamento de Engenharia de Produção, CCT, Campus Universitário Avelino Marcante, 89219-710, Joinville, SC, Brazil fernando@seed.com.br guilhermesilva.jve@gmail.com Abstract. The choice of the physical arrangement and the process plan is essential in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a manufacturing system. Many industries operate in a batch-based approach using the traditional cell layout, which seeks to attain high flexibility and efficiency that are characteristic of the traditional cellular arrangement. The objective of this study is to compare the traditional cell layout with the virtual cell layout using simulation and design of experiments. Each system contains 10 machines, 8 operators, and 3 suppliers, and an analysis is made using five control factors with regard to resource utilization. The simulation model is subdivided into two stages. In the first stage production orders are generated for the systems, and each order is built based on the following factors: features present in the parts, amount of duplicate features, lot size, type of demand, machining sequence, and machining times. These data are stored in a spreadsheet that is used as input to the simulation model. The results of simulation are stored in another spreadsheet for analysis of variance (ANOVA). In this work full factorial design was used in the execution of the experiments. As a result, the resource utilization of the virtual cell layout is 20% higher than the traditional cell layout. Keywords: Virtual Cell Layout; Traditional Cell Layout; Simulation; Manufacturing; Design of Experiments. 1. INTRODUCTION The increasingly globalized market demands an ever better performance of each organization, so that it would hold up to the challenges that arise. Such challenges often can be overcome only through continuous reduction of the times of activities that do not add value to the customer (Slack et al., 2009). According to Brennan and Foroughi (1999), manufacturing has been changing its characteristics, and this affects the way its functions should be seen and executed. Numerous times on the shop floor it is not possible to meet important requirements such as quality, productivity, flexibility, cost, innovation, among others, due to the occurrence of problems. Among these problems the following can be cited: inadequate layout, long setup times, large inventory, etc. In this scenario, the use of process plans with pre-established alternatives may prove to be advantageous since a previously selected alternative resource may be included during the preparation of the process plan. The presence of pre-planned alternatives is likely to provide more flexibility in decision-making (Ferreira and Wysk, 2001a, 2001b). Kilwhani et al. (2011) show that an adequate choice of layout configuration on the factory floor is key to enable and enhance the competitiveness of a company in today's global economy. Both the reduction of flow times and setup times, as well as part routing flexibility are very important for the viability of the business. The traditional manufacturing cells were devised to achieve the above characteristics. According to Greene and Sadowski (1982), each cell is designed to produce a family of parts, which require similar machines, tooling, and fixtures. The parts in the family usually go from raw material to finished parts within a single cell. Traditional cell layout has advantages compared with the job shop (i.e. functional) layout such as reduced setup times, reduced work in process (WIP), and increased part flow. However, conventional cellular manufacturing may not be appropriate if operation routing is prone to change in time (Drolet et al., 2008), which can be the result of a high variability of parts to be manufactured.