Developing a Process Layout

The departments in a low-volume toy factory might consist of the shipping and receiving department, the plastic molding and stamping department, the metal forming department, the sewing department, and the painting department. Parts of the toys are fabricated in this department, and then sent to assembly departments where they are put together. In many installations, optimal placement often means placing departments with large amounts of interdepartmental traffic adjacent to one another.

Suppose that we want to arrange the eight departments of a toy factory to minimize the interdepartmental material handling cost. Initially, let us make the simplifying assumption that all departments have the same amount of space say 40x40feet and that the building is 80feet wide and 160feet long. The first things we would want to know are the nature of the flow between departments and how the material is transported. If the company has another factory that makes similar products, information about flow patterns might be abstracted from the records. On the other hand, if this is a new product line, such information would have to come from touting sheets or from estimates by knowledgeable personnel such as process or industrial engineers. Of course, these data regardless of their source will have to be modified to reflect the nature of future orders over the projected life of the proposed layout

Let us assume that this information is available. We find that all material is transported in a standard-size crate by forklift truck, one crate to a truck. Suppose that transportation cost is $1 to move a load between adjacent departments and $1 extra for each department in between. The expected loads between the departments for the first year of operation are tabulated as follows. Diagonal moves are permitted,

    1       2       3       4      5         6         7          8      Deptmnt                Activity175 50 0 30 200 20 25 1 Shipping and Receiving

0 100 75 90 80 90 2 Plastic molding and stamping17 88 125 99 180 3 Metal forming

20 5 0 25 4 Sewing department0 180 187 5 Small toy assembly

374 103 6 Large toy assembly7 7 Painting

8 Mechanism assembly

1. Prepare a building dimensions and departments2. Draw interdepartmental flow graph with number of annual movements3. Prepare a initial cost matrix4. Suggest a best layout