The purpose of this research effort, was to analyze whether the birth and development of assembly line research were driven by an industry/government "push" or by an academic "pull", examine the historical growth and decay patterns (life cycles) of assembly line research and publications, note...

Previous research has shown that the formation of temporary, logical manufacturing cells in a job shop, overcomes problems of high setup frequency typically found in job shops. In addition, this form of cellular configuration is more flexible than tranditional, group technology based cellular...