Chapter 9, Problem 1DQ

Summary Introduction

To explain: The layout strategies.

Explanation of Solution

The seven layout strategies are as follows:

• Office layout

  Locate office workers close to each other who require frequent contact for carrying out their work. To illustrate, the secretary of the CEO should have a desk as close to the CEO’s room as possible. The Corporate Planning Manager’s workplace cannot be too far from the CEO’s room.

• Retail layout

  The shelf space and the shelf location depend on customer requirements and convenience. A customer should find it convenient to locate what he is looking for in a supermarket.

• Warehouse layout

  In a warehouse, layouts aim at optimizing the volume of warehouse space usage and the convenience of storage and retrieval. The warehouse layout should keep in view usage of material handing equipment such as forklift trucks, pallet trucks, cranes and so on.

• Project or fixed position

  In a shipbuilding yard, the position of the ship being built is fixed. Workers and equipment move to the work area.

• Process-oriented layout

  A typical job shop may have metal cutting machine tools such as lathes, milling machines, drilling machines, grinding machines and so on. To process each job, the extent of requirements of time from different groups of machine tools may vary. Some jobs may require more of lathe work. Some others may require more of grinding work and so on. The layout will normally have clusters of machines such as a few lathes, at one location, a few grinding machines may be in a different location and so on.

• Work cells

  Typically in manufacturing industry, a family of products or a category of items with similar characteristics may require special arrangement of machines and operators so that the work is done efficiently. Normally these machines may be dispersed on the shop floor and for creating a work cell, they are brought together.

• Repetitive or continuous

  Layouts for products that require high volume output and are of less variety often have specialized equipment or “special purpose machines” which are laid out sequentially. Manufacturing facilities for bearings, automobile tires, consumer durables and so on have typical layouts which can be categorized as “repetitive or continuous” layouts.