Plant Layout

Definitions :Planning and arranging manufacturing machinery ,equipment and services for the first time in
completely new plants.
OR
Improvements in layouts already in use in order to introduce new methods and improvements in
manufacturing procedures.
The optimum placement or arrangement of space-consuming components within a productive
system. The space-consuming components are:
machines
materials
manpower
Layout decisions entail determining the placement of departments, work
groups within the departments, workstations, machines, and stock-holding
points within a production facility.
The objective is to arrange these elements in a way that ensures a smooth
work flow (in a factory) or a particular traffic pattern (in a service
organization). In general, the inputs to the layout decision are as follows:
1 Specification of the objectives and corresponding criteria to be used to
evaluate the design. The amount of space required, and the distance that
must be traveled between elements in the layout, are common basic criteria.
2 Estimates of product or service demand on the system.
3 Processing requirements in terms of number of operations and amount of
flow between the elements in the layout.
4 Space requirements for the elements in the layout.
5 Space availability within the facility itself, or if this is a new facility,
possible building configurations.
The benefits of a good layout include:
1. smooth material flow
2. reduced inventories
3. better scheduling
4. effective space utilization
5. fewer production bottlenecks
6. reduced material handling costs
Strategic Importance of Layout Decisions
The objective of layout strategy is to develop an economic layout that will meet the
firms competitive requirements
General Objectives for all types of a good Layout

Provide enough production capacity.

Reduce material handling costs.
Reduce congestion that impedes movement of men and material.
Reduce hazards to men and material.
Utilize labor efficiently
Objectives of a good Layout
Increase employee morale
Reduce accidents
Utilize available space efficiently and effectively.
Provide for volume and product flexibility.
Provide ease of supervision.
Objectives for Manufacturing Operation Layouts
1. Provide enough productive capacity
2. Reduce materials-handling costs
3. Conform to site and building constraints
4. Allow space for production machines
5. Allow high labour, machine and space utilization and productivity
6. Provide for volume and product flexibility
7. Provide space for restrooms, cafeterias and other personal-care needs
8. Provide for employee safety and health
9. Allow ease of supervision
10. Allow ease of maintenance
11. Control capital investment
Additional Objectives for Warehouse Operation Layouts
1. Promote efficient loading and unloading of shipping vehicles
2. Provide for effective stock picking, order filing and unit loading
3. Allow ease of inventory counts
4. Promote accurate inventory recordkeeping
Additional Objectives for Service Operation Layouts
1. Provide for customer comfort and convenience
2. Provide an appealing setting for customers
3. Allow an attractive display of merchandise
4. Reduce travel of personnel or customers
5. Provide for privacy in work areas
6. Promote communication between work areas
7. Provide for stock rotation for shelf life
Additional Objectives for Office Operation Layouts
i. Reinforce organization structure
ii. Reduce travel of personnel or customers
iii. Provide for privacy in work areas
iv. Promote communication between work areas
Principles of Layout
1) The principle of minimum travel :-

Men and materials should travel the shortest distance between operations so as to avoid waste
of labor and time and minimize cost of material handling.
2) Principle of sequence
Machinery and operations should be arranged in a sequential order.
3) Principle of usage
Every foot of space should be effectively utilized.
This should be a priority in cities where land is costly.
4) Principle of compactness
There should be a harmonious fusion of all the relevant factors so that final layout looks well
integrated and compact.
5) Principle of safety and Satisfaction
The layout should contain built in provisions for safety of employees.
It should also be planned on the basis of the comfort and convenience of the workmen so that
they feel satisfied.
6) Principle of Flexibility
The layout should permit revisions with the least difficulty and at minimum cost.
7) Principle of minimum investment
The layout should result in savings in fixed capital investments , not by avoiding installations of
necessary facilities but by an intensive use of available facilities.

Types of Layout

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Office layout
Retail layout
Warehouse layout
Fixed-position layout
Process-oriented layout
Work cell layout
Product-oriented layout

1.

Office layout - positions workers, their equipment, and spaces/offices to provide

for movement of information
Grouping of workers, their equipment, and spaces to provide comfort, safety, and
movement of information
Movement of information is main distinction
Typically in state of flux due to frequent technological changes

2.

Retail layout - allocates shelf space and responds to customer behavior

Objective is to maximize profitability per square foot of floor space

Sales and profitability vary directly with customer exposure
Special mention is in order for a few guidelines derived from marketing
research and
relating to circulation planning and merchandise grouping:
1 People in supermarkets tend to follow a perimeter pattern in their
shopping behavior.

Placing high-profit items along the walls of a store will enhance their
probability
of purchase.
2 Sale merchandise placed at the end of an aisle in supermarkets almost
always sells
better than the same sale items placed in the interior portion of an aisle.
3 Credit and other nonselling departments that require customers to wait
for the
completion of their services should be placed either on upper floors or in
dead
areas.
4 In department stores, locations nearest the store entrances and adjacent
to frontwindow
displays are most valuable in terms of sales potential.
Retail Slotting:Manufacturers pay fees to retailers to get the retailers to display (slot) their product
Contributing factors
1) Limited shelf space
2) An increasing number of new products
3) Closer control of inventory

3.

Warehouse layout - Objective is to optimize trade-offs between handling

costs and costs associated with warehouse space

Maximize the total cube of the warehouse utilize its full volume while maintaining low
material handling costs
Material Handling Costs
a) All costs associated with the transaction
b) Incoming transport
c) Storage
d) Finding and moving material
e) Outgoing transport
f) Equipment, people, material, supervision, insurance, depreciation
Minimize damage and spoilage
Warehouse density tends to vary inversely with the number of different items stored
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) can significantly improve warehouse
productivity
Dock location is a key design element
Cross-Docking
Materials are moved directly from receiving to shipping and are not placed in storage in the
warehouse

Requires tight scheduling and accurate shipments, typically with bar code identification
Random Stocking
Typically requires automatic identification systems (AISs) and effective information systems
Random assignment of stocking locations allows more efficient use of space
(1) Maintain list of open locations
(2) Maintain accurate records
(3) Sequence items to minimize travel time
(4) Combine picking orders
Assign classes of items to particular areas
Customization
Value-added activities performed at the warehouse
Enable low cost and rapid response strategies
a) Assembly of components
b) Loading software
c) Repairs
d) Customized labeling and packaging

4.

1.
2.
3.

Fixed-position layout - addresses the layout requirements of large, bulky

projects such as ships and buildings.
Product remains in one place
Workers and equipment come to site
Complicating factors
Limited space at site
Different materials required at different stages of the project
Volume of materials needed is dynamic

In fixed-position layout, a high degree of task ordering is common, and to

the extent that
this precedence determines production stages, a fixed-position layout
might be developed
by arranging materials according to their technological priority. This
procedure would be
expected in making a layout for a large machine tool, such as a
stamping machine, where
manufacture follows a rigid sequence; assembly is performed from the
ground up, with
parts being added to the base in almost a building-block fashion.
Alternative Strategy
As much of the project as possible is completed off-site in a productoriented facility

This can significantly improve efficiency but is only possible when multiple
similar units need
to be created
5.

Process-oriented layout - deals with low-volume, high-variety

production (also called job shop or intermittent production)

Aprocess layout (also called a job-shop or functional layout) is a
format in which similar
equipment or functions are grouped together, such as all lathes in one
area and all stamping
machines in another. A part being worked on then travels, according to
the established
sequence of operations, from area to area, where the proper machines
are located for each
operation. This type of layout is typical of hospitals, for example, where
areas are dedicated
to particular types of medical care, such as maternity wards and
intensive care units.Flexible
and capable of handling a wide variety of products or services
Scheduling can be difficult
and setup, material handling, and labor costs can be high

Arrange work centers so as to minimize the costs of material handling

Basic cost elements are
1. Number of loads (or people) moving between centers
2. Distance loads (or people) move between centers

.6) Work cell layout - a special arrangement of machinery and equipment to

focus on
production of a single product or group of related products
A group technology (cellular) layout groups dissimilar machines
into work centers (or cells) to work on products that have similar
shapes and processing requirements. A group technology (GT) layout
is similar to a process layout in that cells are designed to perform a
specific set of processes, and it is similar to a product layout in that
the cells are dedicated to a limited range of products.
The overall objective is to gain the benefits of product layout in
jobshop kinds of
production. These benefits include
1 Better human relations. Cells consist of a few workers who form
a small work team;
a team turns out complete units of work.
2 Improved operator expertise. Workers see only a limited
number of different parts in
a finite production cycle, so repetition means quick learning.
3 Less in-process inventory and material handling. A cell
combines several roduction
stages, so fewer parts travel through the shop.
4 Faster production setup. Fewer jobs mean reduced tooling and
hence faster tooling
changes.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Advantages of Work Cells

Reduced work-in-process inventory
Less floor space required
Reduced raw material and finished goods inventory
Reduced direct labor
Heightened sense of employee participation
Increased use of equipment and machinery
Reduced investment in machinery and equipment

7) Product-oriented layout

.
- seeks the best personnel and machine
utilizations in repetitive or continuous production
Organized around products or families of similar high-volume, low-variety products
The path for each part is, in effect, a straight line. Production lines for
shoes, chemical plants, and car washes are all product layouts.
1. Volume is adequate for high equipment utilization
2. Product demand is stable enough to justify high investment in
specialized equipment
3. Product is standardized or approaching a phase of life cycle that
justifies investment
4. Supplies of raw materials and components are adequate and of
uniform quality
The basic difference between product layout and process layout is
the pattern
of work flow. As we have seen in process layout, the pattern can be
highly variable
because material for any given job may have to be routed to the
same processing
department several times during its production cycle. In product
layout, equipment or

departments are dedicated to a particular product line, duplicate

equipment is employed to
avoid backtracking,and a straight-line flow of material movement is
achievable. Adopting
a product layout makes sense when the batch size of a given product
or part is large
relative to the number of different products or parts produced.
Fabrication line
1. Builds components on a series of machines
2. Machine-paced
3. Require mechanical or engineering changes to balance
Assembly line
1. Puts fabricated parts together at a series of
workstations
2. Paced by work tasks
3. Balanced by moving tasks
Both types of lines must be balanced so that the time to perform the work
at each station is

the same

Advantages of Product layout

1. Low variable cost per unit
2. Low material handling costs
3. Reduced work-in-process inventories
4. Easier training and supervision
5. Rapid throughput
Disadvantages of Product layout
1. High volume is required
2. Work stoppage at any point ties up the whole operation
3. Lack of flexibility in product or production rates