FACILITY LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Facility layout and design is an important component of a business's overall operations, both
in terms of maximizing the effectiveness of the production process and meeting the needs of
employees. The basic objective of layout is to ensure a smooth flow of work, material, and
information through a system. The basic meaning of facility is the space in which a business's
activities take place. The layout and design of that space impact greatly how the work is
done—the flow of work, materials, and information through the system. The key to good
facility layout and design is the integration of the needs of people (personnel and customers),
materials (raw, finishes, and in process), and machinery in such a way that they create a
single, well-functioning system.

The importance of layout

The importance of a layout would be better appreciated if one understands the influence of an
efficient layout on the manufacturing function: it makes it smooth and efficient. Operating
efficiencies, such as economies in the cost of handling materials, minimization of production
delays and avoidance of bottlenecks”, all these depend on a proper layout.

An ideally laid out plant reduces manufacturing costs through reduced materials handling,
reduced personnel and equipment requirements and reduced process inventory.

The objectives or advantages of an ideal layout are outlined in the paragraphs that follow.
The advantages are common to all the plants, irrespective of age; and whether a plant
employs 50 workers or 50,000 makes no difference in so far as the applicability of the plant
layout advantages is concerned. Some of these advantages are:

Economies in Handling
Nearly 30% to 40% of the manufacturing cost is accounted for, by materials handling. Every
effort should, therefore, be made to cut down on this cost. Long distance movements should
be avoided and specific handling operations must be eliminated. A cynic may say that the
cheapest way to handle materials is not to handle them at all. But, in a factory, materials have
to be handled; and therefore, it all depends on the layout.

Effective Use of Available Area

Every inch of the plant area is valuable, especially in urban areas. Efforts should therefore be
made to make use of the available area by planning the layout properly. Some steps for
achieving this end are: location of equipment and services in order that they may perform
multiple functions; development of up-to-date work areas and operator job assignments for a
full utilization of the labor force.
Minimization of Production Delays
Repeat orders and new customers will be the result of prompt execution of orders. Every
management should try to keep to the delivery schedules. Often, the deadline dates for
delivery of production orders are a bug-a-boo to the management.
Plant layout is a significant factor in the timely execution of orders. An ideal layout
eliminates such causes of delays as shortage of space, long-distance movements of materials,
spoiled work and thus contributes to the speedy execution of orders.

Improved Quality Control

Timely execution of orders will be meaningful when the quality of the output is not below
expectations. To ensure quality, inspection should be conducted at different stages of
manufacture. An ideal layout provides for inspection to ensure better quality control.

Minimum Equipment Investment

Investment on equipment can be minimized by planned machine balance and location,
minimum handling distances, by the installation of general purpose machines and by planned
machine loading. A good plant layout provides all these advantages.

Avoidance of Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks refer to any place in a production process where materials tend to pile up or are
produced at a speed, less rapid than the previous or subsequent operations. Bottlenecks are
caused by inadequate machine capacity, inadequate storage space or low speed on part of the
operators. The results of bottlenecks are delays in productions schedules, congestion,
accidents and wastage of floor area. All these may be overcome with an efficient layout.

Better Production Control

Production Control is concerned with the production of the product of the right type, at the
right time and at a reasonable cost. A good plant layout is a requisite for good production
control and provides the production control officers with a systematic basis upon which to
build organization and procedures.

Better Supervision
A good plant layout ensures better supervision in two ways:
1.Determining the number of workers to be handled by a supervisor and
2.Enabling the supervisor to get a full view of the entire plant at one glance.
A good plant layout is, therefore, the first step to good supervision.

Improved Utilization of Labor

Labor is paid for every hour it spends in the factory. The efficiency of a management lies in
utilizing the time for productive purpose. A good plant layout is one of the factors in effective
utilization of labor. It makes possible individual operations, the process and flow of materials
handling in such a way that the time of each worker is effectively spent on productive
operations.
Improved Employee Morale
Employee morale is achieved when workers are cheerful and confident. This state of mental
condition is vital to the success of any organization.
Morale depends on:
(a)Better working condition;
(b)Better employee facilities;
(c)Reduced number of accidents;
(d)Increased earnings.

FACTORS IN DETERMINING LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Small business owners need to consider many operational factors when building or
renovating a facility for maximum layout effectiveness. These criteria include the following:

(1). Ease of future expansion or change—Facilities should be designed so that they can be
easily expanded or adjusted to meet changing production needs. "Although redesigning
a facility is a major, expensive undertaking not to be done lightly, there is always the
possibility that a redesign will be necessary," said Weiss and Gershon in their
book Production and Operations Management. "Therefore, any design should be
flexible'¦. Flexible manufacturing systems most often are highly automated facilities
having intermediate-volume production of a variety of products. Their goal is to
minimize changeover or setup times for producing the different products while still
achieving close to assembly line (single-product) production rates."

(2). Flow of movement—The facility design should reflect a recognition of the importance
of smooth process flow. In the case of factory facilities, the editors of How to Run a
Small Business state that "ideally, the plan will show the raw materials entering your
plant at one end and the finished product emerging at the other. The flow need not be
a straight line. Parallel flows, U-shaped patterns, or even a zig-zag that ends up with
the finished product back at the shipping and receiving bays can be functional.
However, backtracking is to be avoided in whatever pattern is chosen. When parts and
materials move against or across the overall flow, personnel and paperwork become
confused, parts become lost, and the attainment of coordination becomes
complicated."

(3). Materials handling—Small business owners should make certain that the facility
layout makes it possible to handle materials (products, equipment, containers, etc.) in
an orderly, efficient—and preferably simple—manner.
(4). Output needs—The facility should be laid out in a way that is conducive to helping the
business meet its production needs.
(5). Space utilization—This aspect of facility design includes everything from making sure
that traffic lanes are wide enough to making certain that inventory storage warehouses
or rooms utilize as much vertical space as possible.
(6). Shipping and receiving—The J. K. Lasser Institute counseled small business owners
to leave ample room for this aspect of operations. "While space does tend to fill itself
up, receiving and shipping rarely get enough space for the work to be done
effectively," it said in How to Run a Small Business.
(7). Ease of communication and support—Facilities should be laid out so that
communication within various areas of the business and interactions with vendors and
customers can be done in an easy and effective manner. Similarly, support areas
should be stationed in areas that help them to serve operating areas.
(8). Impact on employee morale and job satisfaction—Since countless studies have
indicated that employee morale has a major impact on productivity, Weiss and
Gershon counsel owners and managers to heed this factor when pondering facility
design alternatives: "Some ways layout design can increase morale are obvious, such
as providing for light-colored walls, windows, space. Other ways are less obvious and
not directly related to the production process. Some examples are including a cafeteria
or even a gymnasium in the facility design. Again, though, there are costs to be traded
off. That is, does the increase in morale due to a cafeteria increase productivity to the
extent that the increased productivity covers the cost of building and staffing the
cafeteria."
(9). Promotional value—If the business commonly receives visitors in the form of
customers, vendors, investors, etc., the small business owner may want to make sure
that the facility layout is an attractive one that further burnishes the company's
reputation. Design factors that can influence the degree of attractiveness of a facility
include not only the design of the production area itself, but the impact that it has on,
for instance, ease of fulfilling maintenance/cleaning tasks.
(10). Safety—The facility layout should enable the business to effectively operate in
accordance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines and other
legal restrictions.
"Facility layout must be considered very carefully because we do not want to constantly
redesign the facility," summarized Weiss and Gershon. "Some of the goals in designing the
facility are to ensure a minimum amount of materials handling, to avoid bottlenecks, to
minimize machine interference, to ensure high employee morale and safety, and to ensure
flexibility. Essentially, there are two distinct types of layout. Product layout is synonymous
with assembly line and is oriented toward the products that are being made. Process layoutis
oriented around the processes that are used to make the products. Generally, product layout is
applicable for high-volume repetitive operations, while process layout is applicable for low-
volume custom-made goods."

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OFFICE AND FACTORY LAYOUTS

Offices and manufacturing facilities are typically designed in much different ways—a
reflection of the disparate products that the two entities make. "A factory produces things,"
wrote Stephen Konz in Facility Design. "These things are moved with conveyors and lift
trucks; factory utilities include gas, water, compressed air, waste disposal, and large amounts
of power as well as telephones and computer networks. A layout criterion is minimization of
transportation cost." Konz pointed out, however, that the mandate of business offices is to
produce information, whether disseminated in physical (reports, memos, and other
documents), electronic (computer files), or oral (telephone, face-to-face encounters) form.
"Office layout criteria, although hard to quantify, are minimization of communication cost
and maximization of employee productivity," wrote Konz.
Layout requirements can also differ dramatically by industry. The needs of service-oriented
businesses, for instance, are often predicated on whether customers receive their services at
the physical location of the business (such as at a bank or pet grooming shop, for instance) or
whether the business goes to the customer's home or place of business to provide the service
(as with exterminators, home repair businesses, plumbing services, etc.) In the latter
instances, these businesses will likely have facility layouts that emphasize storage space for
equipment, chemicals, and paperwork rather than spacious customer waiting areas.
Manufacturers may also have significantly different facility layouts, depending on the unique
needs that they have. After all, the production challenges associated with producing jars of
varnish or mountaineering equipment are apt to be considerably different than those of
making truck chassis or foam beach toys. Retail outlets comprise yet another business sector
that has unique facility layout needs. Such establishments typically emphasize sales floor
space, inventory logistics, foot-traffic issues, and overall store attractiveness when studying
facility layout issues.

Given these emphases, it is not surprising that, as a general rule, office workers will enjoy
advantages over their material production brethren in such areas as ventilation, lighting,
acoustics, and climate control.

Facilities planning and layout analysis – Practice Problems

Problem 1

Three rooms, 1, 2, and 3, are available to house three departments A, B, and C. The center to
center distance measured between the adjacent rooms is 1 unit equal to10 metres. The weekly
loads traveling from each department to other departments are given in the Table. Obtain a
layout that minimizes the total load – distance value. Assume the cost of travel is $1.00 for
every unit distance between the departments per unit load transported. The movements are
parallel to the walls.
 From- to A B C

A 10 15 18

B - - 20

C - - -

Problem 2
There are four departments in a manufacturing organization to be located in four adjacent
rooms. Two configurations are proposed as shown in the Figures 1 and 2. The inter-
department movements of units between departments are shown in the Table. Assume the
movement to be along straight line routes only. The center to center distance between
adjacent rooms is 20 metres. Which configuration do you recommend?

A B C A C D
D B
Configuration 1 Configuration 2

Inter-department movements in terms of number of units:

From  To  A B C D
A - 30 25 15
B 10 - 20 30
C 50 5 - 40
D 20 20 10 -
Problem 3
A small workshop has four departments A, B, C, and D, each measuring 10 metres by 10
metres. The initial layout is shown in figure. The number of trips between each pair of
departments is: A and B = 50, A and C = 20, A and D = 30, B and C = 10, B and D = 25, and
C and D = 40. Assume that materials travel at the speed of 5 metres per minute when moving
between departments.
a) Determine the total travel time in the given layout
b) In how many ways the departments can be arranged to form different layout
configurations and how many unique combinations are there?
c) Evaluate only those unique combinations of layouts and determine the layout with the
least total time of travel.
A B

C D
Problem 4
A manufacturing organization produces different components and has 10 departments marked
1 to 10 located in rooms as shown in figure. Components A, B, C, D, E, and F pass through
different sequence and in different quantities as shown in the Table. Two configurations are
proposed for the layout as shown in Figure. Determine the layout to be adopted.
 Component Sequence Units per month

A 1-5-4-10 1000

B 2-6-3-9 2000

C 2-10-1-9 3000

D 1-7-8-10 1000

E 2-5-6-9 2000

F 1-7-4-10 4000

8 4 10 2 5
3 7 1 9 6
Layout 1

7 1 9 6 3
4 10 2 5 8
Layout 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baykasoglu, Adil, Turkay Dereli, and Ibrahim Sabuncu. "An Ant Colony Algorithm for
Solving Budget Constrained and Unconstrained Dynamic Facility Layout Problems." Omega.
August 2006.
Cornacchia, Anthony J. "Facility Management: Life in the Fast Lane." The Office. June 1994.
Groover, M. P. Automation, Production Systems, and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing.
Prentice-Hall, 1987.
J. K. Lasser Institute. How to Run a Small Business. Seventh Edition. McGraw-Hill, 1994.
Konz, Stephen. Facility Design. John Wiley & Sons, 1985.
Myers, John. "Fundamentals of Production that Influence Industrial Facility
Designs." Appraisal Journal. April 1994.
Sherali, Hanif D., Barbara M.P. Fraticelli, and Russell D. Melle. "Enhanced Model
Formulations for Optimal Facility Layout." Operations Research. July-August 2003.
Weiss, Howard J., and Mark E. Gershon. Production and Operations Management. Allyn and
Bacon, 1989.