Page 219 - DMGT206_PRODUCTION_AND_OPERATIONS_MANAGEMENT

Production and Operations Management

Notes The problem of layout continuous inflow (product layout) and job shop (process layout) are
different in nature. The primary problem in product layout is of line balancing. In process
layout, the objective is to find out the most economic arrangement of various departments (or
machine centers) in a manufacturing organization.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. At the micro level facility planning involves decisions about the ……………..layout and
physical arrangement of economic activity centers.
2. ……………...operations are characterized by the work piece moving from one group of
machines to another.
11.2 Types of Layout

The Facility Layout plan institutionalizes the fundamental organizational structure. Every layout
has four fundamental elements:

1. Space Planning Units (SPUs)
2. Affinities
3. Space
4. Constraints
Keeping these in mind, several fundamental choices are available to managers. These choices
are incorporated in the four basic types of layouts:
1. Process layout
2. Product layout
3. Fixed layout

4. Group layout
These basic types of layout should keep in mind the following principles:
1. The emphasis should be on gross material flow, personal space and communication.
2. Socio-technical considerations should play an important part in determining the layout.

3. The layout should facilitate arrangement of physical facilities, which allows most efficient
use of men, machines and materials necessary for the operation to meet the requirements
of capacity and quality.

4. The layout should be based on the premise that a properly designed facility is an important
source of competitive advantage.
It is very difficult to enumerate all the properties of a layout that makes the most efficient use of
men, machines and materials; however the layout should try to:
1. Operate at low cost
2. Effectively use space
3. Provide for easy supervision

4. Provide fast delivery
5. Minimum cost of material handling

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