Limitations of Group Technology or Cellular Manufacturing

Group Technology is a great concept. But all good concepts do have their own limitations and need proper care in their applications for results to be realized in practice. The limitations of cellular manufacturing may be as follows.

1. High Cost: The cost of implementation is generally high. This is because an outside consultant is often required since in house expertise on GT is rarely available. It requires a long set up time and painful debugging.
2. Not Suitable for large Variety of Products : May not be suitable for a factory with a very large variety of products.
3. The entire production of the company cannot be put under the GT and hence GT will have to coexist with the conventional layouts.
4. Not suits all Applications : There are too many GT codes in used and there is no one GT code that suits all applications.
5. It is often difficult to conceive all the operations for a group of components being taken care of in the cell created for it.
6. The range of product mix in a plant many be under constant change in which case the GT cells may need constant revision which is impractical .