Facility Layout: Resource Management

Managing Resources: Facility Layout

• Facility layout constitutes the physical arrangement of all elements needed for production or service.
• This encompasses machines, personnel, raw materials, and finished goods.
• A facility layout impacts potential resources such as materials, machines, people, space, knowledge, time and money.

Three-Phase Facility Layout Decision-Making Process

• Involves assessment of requirements and consideration of volume, safety, and clean room needs.
• Includes identifying functions like assembly, welding, and soldering.
• Involves selection in the decision-making process.

Layout Decisions: Layout

• The layout involves configuration of departments, work centers, and equipment.
• Particular emphasis is placed on the movement of work involving customers or materials through the system.
• Facilities layout decisions are made when designing new facilities.
• Facilities layout decisions are also made designing existing facilities.

Facility Applications

• Facility layout affects hospitals, warehouses, schools, offices, workstations, banks, and shopping centers.
• Also impacts airports and industrial plants.

Facility Layout Objectives

• A basic objective is to facilitate smooth flow of work, materials, and information.
• Supporting objectives include facilitating product or service quality.
• A supporting objective is to use workers and space efficiently, to avoid bottlenecks.
• Further objectives are to minimize material handling costs and unnecessary movement of workers or material.
• Objectives include minimizing production time or customer service time, and designing for safety.

Layout Types

• Product layouts are arrangements using standardized processing operations for a smooth, rapid, high-volume flow.
• Process layouts will handle varied processing requirements.
• Fixed-Position layouts have the product or project remain stationary.
• Hybrid (Cellular) layouts are also used.

Product Layouts

• Product layouts use repetitive or continuous processing.
• Resources create optimal flow from one operation to the next.
• Product layouts are applicable when there is a limited range of high quantity products.
• Product layouts are highly capital intensive, not work intensive for reduced material handling costs.
• Product layouts allow for little work-in-process inventory and short lead times.
• Dedicated production lines can be created for very high runners and/or production lines per product family for B-products.
• Product layouts offer low flexibility but high efficiency.

Advantages of Product Layout

• High rate of output
• Low unit cost
• Labor specialization
• Low material handling cost per unit
• High utilization of labor and equipment
• Established routing and scheduing
• Routine accounting, purchasing, and inventory control

Disadvantages of Product Layout

• Creates repetitive jobs
• Poorly skilled workers may not mantain equipment or quality of output
• Fairly inflexible to changes in volume or product or process design
• Highly susceptible to shutdowns
• Preventive maintenance, capacity for quick repair and spare-parts inventories are necessary
• Individual incentive plans are impractical

Process Layouts

• Handles varied processing requirements, used for intermittent processing, in job shops, or batch.
• Is applied where there are many low quantity products.
• Uses general-purpose machinery with reduced capital intensity.
• Process layouts tend to be work intensive, resulting in higher material handling costs.
• Production occurs in batches, increasing work-in-process inventory and lead times.
• Offers high flexibility but low efficiency.

Advantages of Process Layouts

• Can handle a variety of processing requirements and is not especially vulnerable to equipment failures.
• Uses general-purpose equipment that is often less costly, easier, and less costly to maintain.
• Individual incentive systems are possible.

Disadvantages of Process Layouts

• In-process inventories can be high
• Routing and scheduling pose continual challemges
• Equipment utilization rates are low
• Material handling is slow and inefficient
• Reduced spans of supervision
• Special attention to each product or cutomer
• Increased accounting, inventory control, and purchasing

Fixed Position Layouts

• In fixed-position layouts, the product or project remains stationary as workers, materials, and equipment are moved as needed.

Hybrid (Cellular) Layouts

• Cellular manufacturing moves as quickly as possible, makes a wide variety of similar products, while making as little waste as possible.
• Cellular manufacturing uses multiple cells composed of one or multiple different machines to accomplish a certain task.
• Includes hospitals, supermarkets and shipyards, group dissimilar equipment to produce similar parts using (closely) identical routing

Cellular Layouts

• Involves grouping into part families of items with similar design or manufacturing characteristics.
• Design characteristics include size, shape, and function.
• Manufacturing and processing characteristics include the type and sequence of operations required.
• Systematically analyzes parts to identify the part families.

Hybrid Layouts

• The main challenge is desiging a Hybrid Layout lies in determining formation of cells and identifing the components within each family. Each cell is compsed of one or multiple different machines. Each family is comprised of sequence of operations that are nearly identical

Ranked Order Clustering

• Goal is to identify product families based on similarities in design or processing.

Ranked Order for Clustering

1. Assign the number 2^n to each row.
2. Compute a column score.
3. Rearrange the columns in decending order.
4. Rearrange the rows in decending.

Ranked Order Clustering : Deals with Exceptions

• Change the component specification to eliminate the process.
• Modify the manufacturing sequence to push to the beginning (preferably in order to outsource) or end activity.
• Subcontract the individual activity - particularly first and last activities.
• Purchase instead of making the entire component - particularly older designs (then focus in-house on products with high value add and less than 2 year old designs, focus on cost elimintation at supplier.
• Co-locate cells to share the process, particularly for low utilised machines.
• Consider purchasing / leasing a new machine to deal with exceptions where co-location isn't possible.
• Re-routing exceptional operations to macines inside the group - if capcity allows.
• Create a further division of machines between groups.
• Consider super-cells - in a jobbing environment join two or more cells into a crazy line.

To-From Analysis

• Uses results from Ranked Order Clustering for analysis.
• Two cells are identified such as Cell 1 which includes machines E, A, F and H and Cell 2 which includes machines B, I, C, and G.
• Each component may have different process order.
• From-To analysis determins which sequence of machines would be more efficient.

From-To Analysis

• From-To determines the optimal sequence of machines or working stations.
• Determines preferred layout order of machines that minimizes backflow.

Backflow

• Backflow refers to the movement of materials, products, or information in the opposite direction of intended flow.
• Backflow is inefficient and wasteful due to additional handling, increasing transporation costs which dirupts sequence of operations
• A key objective is to minimize in desigining efficient systems and processes.

From-To Analysis: Input

• List of products and their volumes, followed the necessary process order, are all needed for proper From-To analysis.

From-To Analysis: Matrix

• Very first step is to determine the From \ To matrix in the layout process.
• After which follow compute the total number of products going in and out of each machine.

From-To Analysis: Implementation

• After obtaining totals, achieve optimal flow and reduce looping by obtaining a ratio (To / From) for each stage of production.
• With ratio, sorting machines in ascending order will obtain optimum flow sequence for layout optimization.
• Identify which movements are necessary, and which should be removed, while identifying amount of back flow for a system for accurate layout adjustments

Coping With Backflow

• Use cells to minimize distances, with cellular design
• Backflow is acceptable when volumes are low
• Redesign products to eliminate backflow & outsource low-volume
• Re-layout plant every 6 months when product designs and marketing mix changes

Process Selection

• Must decide how much variety will handle.
• How much volume process should consider.

Process Selection: Basic Categories

• Job Shop : Suited to repair shops and emergency rooms with low or vrey low volume
• Batch : Suited to commercially make bakeries and classroom lectures that are moderate volume.
• Repetitive : Suited to assembly lines and automatic car washes of high volume
• ** Continuous Flow :** Suited to petroleum refining and water treatments that are very high volume

Pro's and Cons Analysis: Layout and Volumes

• Job Shop:*
• Customized goods or services, able to handle variety of work
• Slow, high cost per unit, complex planning and scheduling
• Batch:*
• Semi-standardized goods or services, flexibility & easy to add or change products/services.
• Moderate cost per unit, moderate scheduling complexity
• Repetitive/Assembly:*
• Standardized goods or services with low unit cost, high efficient.
• High volume low flexibility, high costs in downtime.
• • Continuous:**
• Standardized goods or services with very high volume and very efficient
• Very rigid, lack of variety, costly to change and high downtime.

Sustainable Production

• More are prioritizing sustainable production processes
• Focus should be on energy use and efficiency.
• Should focus on CO2 , toxic emmisions, waste generation and worker health & safety.