The development and application of a coding and classification system for manufacturing industry

Abstract

This project was concerned with the development and application of a new coding and classification system for use in a company engaged in the manufacture of Textile machinery. Analysis of the problems at William Cotton Ltd. in the design and manufacturing departments indicated a lack of control of component variety, potential for a more efficient plant layout, potential for improvements in process planning and a need for an effective machanism for the specification of machine tool requirements. A study of these problems led to the conclusion that the application of a suitable coding and classification system would aid their solution. However, evaluation of existing systems revealed that they were deficient in terms of storage capacity, ease of use and flexability of manipulation. This led to the development of a new computer based coding system. This new approach to coding and classification is shown to have advantages overexisting systems, specially with respect to the deficiences discussed above. The new system, which uses a matrix format, allows the coding of both components and machine tools with codes having the same structure. This allows the direct comparison of component features with machine tool manufacturing capabilities.