PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN

ETZC 424 – L2

BITS Pilani Pavan Kumar

Mechanical Engineering
Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Factors influencing Plant Layout

Recap of L1

• What is Facility Management

• What is Plant Layouts
• Various definitions of Plant Layout
• Objectives, Principles of Plant layout
• Symptoms of good layout
• Reasons to go for re-layout design

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Today’s Topic

• We shall be understanding the various factors that influence

Plant Layout in detail.

• Also study their inter-relationships.

• Understand the influence factors and determine their impact

with few case studies.

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Mini Cases

• Germany was well advanced in manufacturing bombers

during the WWII. It was producing bombers in its various
factories spread over the areas under its occupation. Each
bombers was manufactured by a team of highly skilled
technicians from start to finish. In spite of this, it was not able
to meet the requirements during the war. America did not
have any industry or skilled workforce to make bombers.
Technicians involved in car manufacturing were diverted to
manufacture bombers. Yet America was able to ensure a
steady supply of planes and easily win the war. How and
Why?

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Mini Cases

• A flywheel manufacturer used an ingot to make slices and use

them to machine the flywheels for an industry. This worked
fine for some time. As the number of orders increased, using
an ingot was found to be uneconomical owing to more scrap
and other methods of sourcing raw material was proposed.
Forgings or castings were proposed as alternatives. Each
alternative meant that the subsequent processing had to be
modified along with the machines, MHS and
tools/jigs/fixtures.

ETZC 422 - PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN 6

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Mini Cases

• The CSIA Mumbai was developed in the heart of Mumbai with

two intersecting runways. The runways were sufficient for the
aviation traffic till about 5 years back. Since then, due to
sudden boom in air travel and entry of new operators, it was
found that the current runways were not sufficient to handle
the load. Since the airport is located in the city and there are
many buildings surrounding it, there is no scope for
expansion. A new airport is proposed at Panvel to replace the
present airport. Huge investments in purchasing land,
construction of airport, developing roads and utilities specially
for the new airport is planned now.

ETZC 422 - PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN 7

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
What are those factors that influence
Plant Layout
• Type of industry – Continuous / Repetitive / Intermittent
• Product – Product Design / Specification / Quality, Rate of production, varieties
• Method of Production
• Machinery and Equipment
• Material – size, shape, weight, condition and specification
• Movement – men and material
• Employee facilities
• Services
• Factory Building
• Expansion
• Flexibility
• Adaptability and versatility
• Location / Site

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1. Type of Industry

• Continuous Process Industry : Power Plants, Steel

Industry, Chemical Industry, Pharma Industry.
• Repetitive Process Industry: Automotive Assembly
lines, Electrical Appliance Industry
• Intermittent Process Industry: One of a kind
manufacturing, small batch production of variety of
items.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
2. Product

• Product Design – features, special operations

• Product Specification – tolerances, material
type, hardness, surface finish.
• Quantity, Rate of Production, Variety
– Production quantity per time period
– Product mix to be produced (batch or mixed
mode)
– Production quantity based on forecast

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3. Methods of Manufacturing

• Decides the machines, tools, material handling

equipment needed.
• Decides the operations that need to be performed
and the sequence.
• Decides the number of machines and types of
machines that will be needed and the skills of
operators.
• Decides the space requirement for machines, MHS,
operators, Maintenance etc.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
4. Machinery and Equipment

• The type of machinery decides the amount of space to be

allocated for each.
• Correspondingly, it decides the orientation and placement of
each machinery with respect to each other.
• MHS need specified space that has to be earmarked for
straight travel, turns etc.
• Requirement of auxiliary equipment like jigs and fixtures, load
unload stations, WIP racks etc decide the layout design.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
5. Material

• Size
• Shape and Bulk
• Weight
• Conditions
• Special Characteristics

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6. Movement

• Movement of men for loading/unloading, inspection of

machine, operation of machine, maintenance of machine.
• Movement of material based on the type of manufacturing
process selected dictates the layout.
• Has direct bearing on the volume and variety of products to
manufacture
• Determine if the movements are value adding or not.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
7. Employee Facilities

• Ergonomic working conditions

• Rest areas
• Break areas
• Medical rooms

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8. Services

• Support functions needed for proper working of an

industry
• Piping, exhaust and ventilation ducts, Electrical/
Pneumatic / Hydraulic circuitry
• Safety features – fire, hazardous gases, sound
proofing, dust proofing, temperature control

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9. Building

• Decides the space available for machines and

facilities
• Shed or concrete structure
• Has bearing on the type of product being
manufactured
• Option of using cubic space where permissible
• Location of departments, access paths and offices
may be decided
• Can provide aesthetic value to the plant.

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10. Expansion

• Possibility of expansion needs to be planned

before a layout is finalized.
• Areas earmarked for expansion need to be
maintained and not encroached upon.
• Layout may need to be modified during the
expansion phase (in some cases).
• In some cases, use of cubic space may
increase capacity in place of expansion.
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11. Flexibility

• Anticipation of future changes in technology,

processes, materials is essential in layout design.
• The layout needs to be made simple and easy to
reconfigure based on changes in product design,
process design or machinery.
• Simpler the layout and use of general purpose
machines makes the layouts flexible to a large extent.
• Space is one of the consideration required while
keeping the layout flexible.

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12. Adaptability and Versatility

• Layouts designed to cover fluctuations in the

manufacturing process are said to be adaptable
(ability to adapt to new situations quickly)
• Maintain a buffer machine near bottleneck point,
alternate routing, buffer storages etc
• Versatility needs machines that can perform various
type of operation depending on variety of products
that need to be made. Calls for multi-skilled
personnel too.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
13. Location / Site

• Location provides the environmental conditions that

decides the product to be made and to some extent
the percentage of total volume of production.
• Site provides a boundary of area on which the layout
has to be designed. The topography is useful to
decide the placement of departments, access paths,
office space, utilities etc.
• The judicious application of principles of good layout
design determines the best layout for a location /
site.
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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 Coming back to our caselets ……..

Give your opinion on each one of them

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Case 1

• Germany was well advanced in manufacturing bombers

during the WWII. It was producing bombers in its various
factories spread over the areas under its occupation. Each
bombers was manufactured by a team of highly skilled
technicians from start to finish. In spite of this, it was not able
to meet the requirements during the war. America did not
have any industry or skilled workforce to make bombers.
Technicians involved in car manufacturing were diverted to
manufacture bombers. Yet America was able to ensure a
steady supply of planes and easily win the war. How and
Why?

ETZC 422 - PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN 23

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Case 2

• A flywheel manufacturer used an ingot to make slices and use

them to machine the flywheels for an industry. This worked
fine for some time. As the number of orders increased, using
an ingot was found to be uneconomical owing to more scrap
and other methods of sourcing raw material was proposed.
Forgings or castings were proposed as alternatives. Each
alternative meant that the subsequent processing had to be
modified along with the machines, MHS and
tools/jigs/fixtures.

ETZC 422 - PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN 24

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Case 3

• The CSIA Mumbai was developed in the heart of Mumbai with

two intersecting runways. The runways were sufficient for the
aviation traffic till about 5 years back. Since then, due to
sudden boom in air travel and entry of new operators, it was
found that the current runways were not sufficient to handle
the load. Since the airport is located in the city and there are
many buildings surrounding it, there is no scope for
expansion. A new airport is proposed at Panvel to replace the
present airport. Huge investments in purchasing land,
construction of airport, developing roads and utilities specially
for the new airport is planned now.

ETZC 422 - PLANT LAYOUT AND DESIGN 25

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Questions???

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Wrap-up

• Listed the various factors that influence the

layout design
• Identified few inter-related factors
• Understood how each factor relates to the
objectives of layout design.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus