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Unit 3 Facility Layout Planning
Unit 3 Facility Layout Planning
Introduction
In the previous unit, we learnt about the various methodologies used to
select the location of the plant, the flexibility in location choice, the trends
and practices across the globe and also techniques available to determine
the location for a particular type of industry. In this unit we will study about
facility or layout planning and analysis.
Production systems whether manufacturing a product or being responsible
for providing a service need a specific place to carry out their operations.
These systems also need an arrangement of machines, equipment, and
pathways for people to move. In addition, space is required to store
materials, tools, and other accessories and also to provide necessary
support services like dining, parking of vehicles, resting, health care, and
space to interact with customers. Keeping these diverse requirements a
specific area of space is identified and neatly divided and allocated for
various activities and movements. This arrangement in general is called a
“layout” and represents typically a floor plan and also additional details.
Typically, a layout refers to the arrangement of facilities connected with
production, support, customer service, and other activities. It involves the
physical arrangement of work centers, storage, space for material handling
and movement, utility areas and other essential spaces required for
production and operations.
Plant layout is also defined as the organization of a company's physical
facilities to promote the efficient use of equipment, material, people and
energy
How does a layout differ from a floor plan?
A floor plan refers to two dimensional space; namely length and breadth for
different functional requirements whereas a layout looks at three
dimensional requirements, that is, the layout also looks for utilisation of
volumetric space.
Objectives of layout
The primary objective of plant layout is to increase productivity and also to
ensure employee satisfaction and lowering the costs. The major objectives
of a good plant layout are:
Reduced risk to health and safety of employees
Improved morale and worker satisfaction
Increased output
Fewer production delays
Savings in floor space - production, storage, and service
Reduced material handling
Greater utilization of machinery, manpower, and service
Reduced inventory-in-process
Shorter manufacturing time
Reduced clerical work and indirect labor
Easier and better supervision
Less congestion and confusion
Easier adjustment to changing conditions
Facilitate the overall production process.
Minimize material handling costs
Increase production throughout
Effective utilization of available space
Improve employee morale
Utilize labor effectively
Avoid unnecessary capital investment
Provide flexibility
Reduce in-process inventories
Classification of Facilities
The facilities in a manufacturing organisation can be classified as follows:
Production facilities – Workshops, tool room, machine shop, assembly,
heat treatment, painting, testing and inspection.
Support facilities – Storage, packing, administrative, library, service
centre, reception.
Employee utilities – Vehicles’ parking, canteen, healthcare, rest room.
Additional facilities – Conference hall, board room, customer service,
training hall.
The facilities in a service industry are almost similarly developed for various
activities. For example, in an airport the layout consists of:
Runways for landing and take-off
Parking area for employees and passengers
Cargo area
Baggage collection and retrieval
Counters
Security check area
Canteens
Administrative offices
Storage area
Health care
Restrooms
Redesigning of a layout
There are several reasons as to why a redesigning of an existing layout may
be required. These are as follows:
Building not suited for requirements
Product design or process changes made without making necessary
changes in the layout
Installation of additional equipment without considering relationship to
the existing flow pattern
Unexplainable delays and idle time
Stock control difficulties
Decreased production in an area
Crowded conditions
Many people are moving material
Bottlenecks in production
Backtracking
Excessive temporary storage
Obstacles in materials flow
Scheduling difficulties
Wasted cubic space
Idle people and equipment
Excessive time in process
Poor housekeeping
Types of Layouts
The four basic varieties of layouts for manufacturing facilities are:
Process layout
Product layout
Group technology layout
Fixed position layout
Process layout
This type of layout is concerned with the grouping of machines, process, or
services according to their function. This grouping of machines by function is
characteristic of job shops and batch type production facilities. Hence this
type of layout is also called as functional layout. Process layout typically
uses general purpose machines that can be changed over rapidly to new
operations for different product designs.
Consider a car service and repair centre. There may be several
departments or functional areas which are arranged based on space and
technical requirements like number of persons working, machines installed,
number of vehicles coming on an average, and other requirements. Each
car entering into the service centre will follow the following steps:
Arrival at office
Customer informs about the type of problem
Front office guides the customer to drive the car to the required
departments
Car is given the necessary service
Customer returns to front office and makes payment
Car exits from the service centre
Figure below depicts the various departments in a car service centre.
Fig. 6.1: Car Service Centre
Product layout
Product layout commonly referred to as 'line layout', focuses on the
sequence of production or assembly operations required for manufacturing
or assembling a part or a product. These are used in mass or continuous
production. Examples are automobile assembly, cement manufacturing, oil
refining.
In contrast to process layouts, they are not flexible as they are specifically
designed for making or assembling one product. These layouts typically use
specialised machines that are set up once to perform a specific operation for
a long period of time on one product. Figure 6.2 depicts the various
machines in a component manufacturing layout.
Layout Planning
When to select product layout or process layout?
Table 6.1 depicts certain factors and logic that we go by while designing the
type of layout.
Table 6.1: Differences between Product and Process Layout
Example 2
Consider six departments numbered 1 to 6 and the closeness rating as
depicted in Figure 6.9.
1 2 6
3 5 4
B 3 12 14
C 20 10 6
D 18 4 12
E 14 18
All diagonal elements will be zero indicating nothing can go to a department
from the same department. For example from A to A it is zero units
transported. The values above the diagonal indicate the movement in the
forward direction, and the values below the diagonal represent possible
back tracking and attempt should be made to eliminate or minimise this. The
units or numbers used in the travel chart represent an amount of material
handling for example, pallet loads per day, frequency of trips, etc. The
calculation procedure enables the evaluation of different layouts; to find out
the total load times, the distance for each layout, and the results are
tabulated. It is to be remembered that while the load remains the same the
other variable namely; the distance keeps depending on the relative location
of the departments. In a linearly arranged layout as depicted in the figure
6.10, the distance increases as the departments are added.
A B C D E
Fig. 6.10: Linearly Arranged Layout
10 A B
10 C D
10 10
From the calculations it is clear that two major values namely 600 and 500
are between A and C, and A and D. A and C are adjacent and hence, C and
D will be interchanged to make A and D adjacent to each other. Then the
resultant layout will be as depicted in the figure 6.12.
Again the load-distance calculations are carried out and the results are
depicted in the table 6.5.
Table 6.5: Long distance calculations
1 2 3 4
Fig. 6.13: Layout
Table 6.6: Flow between Departments in Units
To → A B C D
From ↓
A - 25 30 20
B - - 15 25
C 35 - - 50
D 40 - - -
Example 5
Six departments marked A, B, C, D, E, and F are to be located in six
production areas marked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The quantity moved between
the departments is depicted in the table 6.7. Obtain the layout that
minimises the total distance traveled. The adjacent departments are located
at a distance of 1 unit (say equal to 20 feet). Figure 6.14 depicts the six
production areas.
1 2 3
4 5 6
Fig. 6.14: Six Production Areas
Table 6.7: Quantity Moved between Departments
From – To A B C D E F
A 50 100 20
B 30 50 10
C 20 100
D 50
E
F
Answer: Figure 6.15 depicts the optimum solution.
A C F
B D E
Fig. 6.15: Optimum Solution
As the items move along the line, the work is progressed intermittently and
leaves the line as a finished product. Typically the objective is, to divide the
work content equally among the workstations so that the workstations are
loaded as evenly as possible. This is known as balancing. Firstly, if such a
balance is not achieved, a certain amount of inefficiency will arise because
some stations will have more work to perform than others, and all the
stations are expected to process same number of items per period of time.
Secondly, unequal work content at different workstations leads to unequal
work distribution and also formation of queue of items. Hence, to ensure a
smooth flow, all the workstations are given the same time to process the
items. The entire line typically, on a manual or power-driven conveyor
moves from workstation to workstation at a constant rate.
The time required to complete the work allotted to each station is known as
the “service time” and the time available at each station is known as the
“cycle time”, normally longer than the service time. The cycle time includes
both the productive as well as the non-productive time along with idle time if
any. Non productive time includes time for movement, handling and
inspection time. The manner in which the work content is allocated to the
station is influenced by the technological sequence of the assembly and
expressed by precedence requirements, that is, one operation must be
completed before the other operation can start. Such constraints limit the
ability to achieve complete or perfect balance while allocating work to
stations.
The allocation of work elements to a workstation may also be influenced by
“zoning” constraints which occurs in two ways: positive zoning constraint
demands that certain operations have to be clubbed together because of
certain sharing of resources, and negative zoning which insists that certain
operations should be clubbed together because of interference or conflict.
All these constraints make it very difficult or impossible to achieve perfect
line balance and hence, a certain amount of balancing delay or balancing
loss is inevitable. Balance delay is defined as the total time available to
complete the given job and the total time required. In other words, the
balance delay is the difference in time between the service time and the
cycle time, expressed as a percentage of the cycle time.
The objective of line balancing is that, given a desired cycle time, the
attempt is to assign work elements to workstations to:
Minimise idle time or balancing delay
Minimise the number of work stations
Distribute balancing delay evenly between stations
Avoid violating any constraints
As it is difficult to achieve all these objectives simultaneously at least one
objective has to be satisfied. Based on this premise, several researchers
have proposed different heuristic methods to realise the desired goal.
Discussing all the different approaches is beyond the scope of this topic and
hence a few methods are illustrated.
Several calculations are involved in line balancing. The different terms and
corresponding calculations are stated here as follows:
Cycle time, C
1
C=
r
Where, c = cycle time in hours per unit, and r = desired output rate in units
per hour
Theoretical minimum number of workstations:
TM =
t
c (to be rounded up)
Idle time nc t
Immediate
Task Task time (seconds)
predecessor
A 60 None
B 80 A
C 20 A
D 50 A
E 90 B, C
F 30 C, D
G 30 E, F
H 60 G
Draw the precedence diagram. What is the cycle time? Balance this line
using the “longest task time” rule. Find the efficiency and the balance delay.
First we draw the precedence diagram. Figure 6.17 depicts the precedence
diagram.
Cycle time = production time per day/ required output per day
= (8 hour/day) (3600 seconds / hour) / 240 units per day =
120 seconds per unit
After drawing the precedence diagram, the next step is to assign the tasks
to the workstations. First we calculate the theoretical minimum number of
workstations as follows:
Minimum number of workstations = total task time / Cycle time
= 420 / 120 = 3.5 or rounded as 4 (Workstations cannot be a fraction)
Now using this number of workstations the tasks have to be assigned
without violating the precedence relationships. Furthermore, in each
workstation the total task time cannot exceed the cycle time.
Starting from workstation 1, task A has a task time of 60 seconds and can
only be clubbed with another task such that the total time doesn’t exceed
120 seconds.
A + B = 60 + 80 = 140 (Not feasible because exceeds 120)
A + C = 60 + 20 = 80 (Feasible)
A + D = 60 + 50 = 110 (Feasible)
Between the two feasible combinations, A + D is selected using the rule
“longest task time”.
Similarly, other tasks are assigned and line is balanced. The final allocation
of tasks to the four workstations is depicted in the Table 6.9.
Table 6.9: Final Allocation of Tasks to the Work Stations
Immediate
Task Task time (seconds)
predecessor
A 30 None
B 35 A
C 30 A
D 35 B
E 15 C
F 65 C
G 40 E, F
H 25 D, G
Material handling
In a typical manufacturing organisation, apart from the people it is the flow of
materials in various forms that will be moving through the layout, as the
materials undergo different types of processing. Traditionally materials in a
manufacturing environment are classified as (1) raw material, (2) work-in-
process or semi finished goods, and (3) finished goods. It is very common to
see these materials being moved from place to place either manually or by
power driven equipment. Due, to the volume and variety today it is very
common to see the materials being moved through automated systems
along guided paths. They are even remotely controlled and monitored. Any
layout that is designed for manufacturing operations; should take into
account the required material handling, and movements, and accordingly
provide the necessary space and convenience for the people to handle the
same. In addition, safety and speed of movement should also be
considered. Further, enough space may be necessary in between the
workstations for temporary storage and subsequent movement. With space
becoming a major concern, it is necessary that material handling might be
done in limited space with a critical look on safety and efficiency issues. In
addition, due to developments in technology, a wide variety of material
handling equipment is available in the market and hence, the production
managers have to make a careful choice to minimise capital investment and
reasonable returns.
Selection and types of material handling equipments
Following are the types of equipments that help us in bringing efficiency to
the process:
1) Horizontal travel: Horizontal travels are in the aisle. The picker is a
worker, who walks or rides a vehicle, and picks the item or product, and
puts into the cart or vehicle. He/she may also pick and place the item on
a conveyor. The storage system could be one of the following:
Pallet racks
Shelves
Storage drawers
Gravity flow racks
The pallet racks can have only one or two levels.
2) Person aboard: In person aboard system, the picker is on a platform of
the vehicle. He/she can move up and also horizontally along the aisle.
3) Part to picker: Part to picker is a mechanised system. Here a
storage/retrieval device carries the trays or bins to the person picking.
These act on the instructions received through a remote control device
with the picker. More than one picker can also access the system.
4) Special equipment: For high throughput and space efficiency, special
equipment are made which are in the form of:
Moveable shelves
Rotary racks
Mobile shuttles that travel in lanes
Automatic item picker which has dispensing mechanisms that eject
items on a conveyor belt
5) Workplace equipment – Items can be kept on a work bench and be
picked up. The carts are also used to keep items for being picked up.
It should be noted that any of the systems described above have to suit the
purpose and economies that can be derived. Before implementing any of
these, a detailed study of alternatives, a plan for expansion or reduction in
the requirement of a particular product or a probable shifting of the location,
etc will have to be undertaken.
Some of the factors affecting the selection of equipment are listed here:
(See Figure 6.19)
Material properties
Size, weight and nestability
Carton counts, pallet counts
Value
Fragility
Environment – temperature, humidity
System requirements for the product
Volume per product
Number of order to be shipped
Response time
Supporting processes – labelling, pricing
Growth factors
Economic factors
Investment required
Project life
Rate of return
Figure 6.19 depicts the factors affecting the selection of equipment
Fig. 6.19: Factors Affecting the Selection of Equipment
6.17 Answers