PLANT LAYOUTS AND DESIGN

ETZC 424 – L 4

BITS Pilani Pavan Kumar

Mechanical Engineering
Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Topic: Procedure for Plant Layout

Recap – L3

• Types of layouts
• Advantages / disadvantages of each type
• P – Q chart
• Break Even Analysis
• FMS

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Basic Steps in Layout Procedure

1. Procure basic data

2. Product Analysis and design of production process
3. Make or buy parts decision
4. Calculation for equipment required
5. Accumulate layout data
6. Sketch plot plan
7. Plan general flow pattern
8. Consider general material handling plan
9. Plan individual work station
10. Selection of specific material handling equipment

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Basic Steps in Layout Procedure

11. Coordinate group of related operations / individual operation

12. Construct flow diagram for production centers
13. Plan and locate services and auxiliary activities
14. Determine the space requirements
15. Allocate activity area to total space / plot plan
16. Plan the building around the layout, consider building type or
fit the layout in the existing building
17. Construct the master layout / visualize the layout
18. Solicitate the opinions and suggestions of those involved in
the process

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Basic Steps in Layout Procedure

19. Develop alternative layouts, evaluate, adjust and select the

best layout with appropriate personnel
20. Check the final layout
21. Obtain official approval
22. Install the layout
23. Follow-up implementation of layout

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
1. Procure basic data

• About products / materials / manufacturing processes

• Existing machines and equipment
• Production schedule
• Existing personnel, material storage and handling equipment
• Existing plant services / building and ground
• Existing layout

This data needs to be gathered either from our own plants or

from various govt./ competitors/ consultants etc.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
2. Product analysis and design of
production process

• Product Analysis: Determine the operations necessary for the

production of each part by breaking the product into
subassemblies and individual parts.
• Design Production Process: Determine the processes by which
materials are to be converted into desired finish product.
– Planning the operations to process R/m to finished part
– Decide sequence of operations
– Select machines and equipment
– Procure production standards
– Prepare route sheets or operations process chart

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• Routing: Determining the machines and equipment the
product has to pass through during the transformation.
Factors for selection of machine are
– Kind of operation / quality and degree of precision to be attained
– Volume of production
– Available equipment and machinery from excess plant capacity
– Production rates by various machine units
– Attainment and maintenance of balanced capacity in various machine
units and operations
– Initial cost / maintenance cost / operating cost
– Space requirement / reliability / availability
– Anticipated period before obsolescence / ease of replacement

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
3. Make or Buy parts decision

• Deciding what parts are to be made in-house and what parts

to buy from vendors.
• Comparison of cost of producing parts in plant Vs price of
acquiring from outside vendor.
• Reliability of supplier / quality / delivery by vendor
• Healthy competition among vendors – availability of other
vendors
• Policy of management – investment in plant and machinery
• Core competency and proprietary technology
• Capacity and demand forecast

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
4. Calculation of equipment
requirements

• Production demand (yearly / Monthly)

• Scrap estimate
• Standard time for all operations
• Machine utilizing factors
• Number of working days
• Number of shifts
• Number of setups and setup times for each operation

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
5. Accumulate layout data

Additional data required

• Machine data cards,
• Machine load charts
• Templates of equipment

This data is provided by OEM

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
6. Sketch plot plan

• It is the diagrammatic representation of building outline

showing the location of the property and location of external
transportation facilities.
• Plan needs to be properly oriented on the property to take
advantage of favourable sun, wind and weather conditions as
well as existing or planned transportation facilities.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
7. Plan general flow pattern

• Plan the movement of raw material and product flow in a

direct path.
• Flow to be planned to ensure minimal movement and
expenditure of time and money
• Flow types
– Straight line
– Serpentine flow or zig – zag
– U –shaped
– Circular flow
– Odd angle flow

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 Straight Line flow

Serpentine flow

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U - Shaped

Load
Station

Un-Load
Station

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Circular flow WS1 – Load / Unload Station

WS8 WS2

WS7 WS3

WS6 WS4

WS5
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8. Consider general material
handling plan

• Consider and decide the methods to be used for handling

materials and products
• Must cover all the activities necessary for handling materials
from unloading of materials from suppliers – actual
production process – loading of finished goods for customers.
• Must include manual and mechanical methods and
equipment.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
9. Plan individual work place / area

• Work area is the area occupied by a machine or a group of

machines which an operator is supposed to work with.
• It is the smallest individual area unit in the layout.
• Need to consider inter-relationship between the machine,
operator, auxiliary equipment.
• Proper access to the MH equipment to be included in the area
• The area to be designed keeping mind the general flow
pattern and orientation of machine to facilitate the smooth
flow.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
10. Selection of Specific MHE

• Select the specific MHE that can perform the handling of

materials at each work areas.
• Must be in sync with the overall MH design and flow pattern
• Use of manual or powered MHE depends upon the volume of
movement, frequency, distance to be moved and the physical
properties.
• High frequency and high volume movements generally need
automated systems to ensure timely and consistent delivery.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
11. Co-ordinate groups of related
operations

• Study the inter-relationship of individual operations or a

group of operations
• Will provide idea about flow of material from each operation
and how it impacts the operation in other machines
• Need to sync with the planned shop-floor flow pattern and
identified MHEs
• Layout planning chart – similar to flow process chart
represents the sequential placement or ordering of work
areas that align with the flow pattern planned.
• Useful function to point out any omissions in planning or
effective integration of operations.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
12. Construction of flow diagram
for production centers

• Some of the activities in this category are generally covered in

the “Plan individual work place or area”.
• The area should include all the auxiliary equipment areas
included.
• Flow of material in and out must be marked on the
production center diagram drawn to scale.
• This will be later used to decide the layout in the site map.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
13. Plan and locate services and
auxiliary activities

• Planning of various equipment and services that support the

production operations. (positive activities)
• Equipment that product dust, odor, pollution, noise etc must
be kept a bit far from the working areas. (negative activities)
• A relationship chart provides a logical solution to these
activities inter-relationship and guide in positioning them with
respect to each other.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
14. Determine the space required

• Estimation of total space that is required for

production center, storage of raw materials, finished
goods, consumables etc
• Sum of square feet for each production center and
equipment, work area for operators, maintenance
services, material storage etc will give an estimate of
total space required.
• About 30 – 40 % space of estimate is earmarked for
aisle space (for movement of men and material)

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
14. Allocate activity area to total
plot plan

• After flow diagrams are made for individual production

centers, it is necessary to fit them into the building outlay.
• Total space requirement worksheet provides an area template
for each activity.
• These templates are made to a specific scale to be arranged
as per the relationship between them.
• Orientation of various area templates without disturbing the
relationship between them are arranged within the floor plan
to get the area allocation diagram

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
16. Plan building around the layout

• In case of new layout design, the area allocation diagram is

used to plan a building around it.
• A simple shed or a multi-story building can be designed based
on the requirement and necessity
• In case of a existing building, it introduces constraints in the
form of column and pre-defined floor plan and hence the
layout needs to be designed keeping these in mind.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
17. Construct master layout

• It can be prepared using templates and models for better

representation.
• Helps to analyze possible alternatives in layouts and eliminate
potential errors in layout before they are installed.
• Can be used to represent the design in more graphical way so
that it is more easy to understand.
• Use of 2D or 3D representation can be done depending upon
the targeted audience.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
18. Solicitate opinions and
suggestions

• Show the model to various stake holders and team

members and seek their opinion and suggestions.
• A unbiased opinion may sometimes prove beneficial
• Support of few stake holders in implementing the
layout design can be crucial.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
19. Develop and evaluate
alternative layouts

• Different layout options must be analyzed to find out

the best alternative.
• It must be able to meet the objectives set during the
start of layout design and must provide for the
lowest operating costs

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
20. Check the final layout

• A final recheck of design data and analysis is a must

before finalizing the layout.
• Last minute updates in data can be used to verify the
soundness of design.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
21. Obtain official approval

• A presentation to the higher authorities as to the

benefits of the layout has to be done to seek their
approval.
• The top management may deliberate on the various
details used in the designs to check the validity under
conditions based on their strategic plans.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
22. Installation of layout

• After the approval of management, the layout needs

to be installed.
• The installation has to be strictly as per the design
and must be done by well experienced personnel.
• Detailed drawings of shop floor, civil plans, power
lines, Pipes and ducts plan etc must be prepared and
supplied.
• This takes the form of project and hence its progress
must be tracked using Gantt charts and PERT/CPM.

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23. Follow-up the implementation

• The layout design is not a one-off activity

• It needs to be reviewed and analyzed periodically to
ensure that the objectives are met.
• Changes in technologies and product design will also
prompt for the review of layouts.

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Recap

• Analyzed the various steps in a layout design

process.
• Some of the steps will be redundant in case of
designing layout in an existing plant.
• Layout design is an iterative process and must
be reviewed periodically to ensure compliance
with the objectives to provide low cost
operations.

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BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus