Product Layout Vs Process Layout

LAYOUT

Layout 7

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In manufacturing, facility layout consists of configuring the institute site with lines, buildings, major facilities, work areas, aisles, and other pertinent features such as department boundaries. While facility layout for services may be similar to that for manufacturing, it also may be somewhat different—every bit is the instance with offices, retailers, and warehouses. Because of its relative permanence, facility layout probably is one of the virtually crucial elements affecting efficiency. An efficient layout can reduce unnecessary fabric handling, help to continue costs low, and maintain product catamenia through the facility.

Firms in the upper left-hand corner of the product-procedure matrix have a process structure known as a jumbled menstruation or a disconnected or intermittent line flow. Upper-left firms by and large have a procedure layout. Firms in the lower right-hand corner of the production-procedure matrix can take a line or continuous flow. Firms in the lower-right function of the matrix by and large have a product layout. Other types of layouts include fixed-position, combination, cellular, and certain types of service layouts.

PROCESS LAYOUT

Process layouts are institute primarily in task shops, or firms that produce customized, depression-volume products that may require different processing requirements and sequences of operations. Process layouts are facility configurations in which operations of a like nature or part are grouped together. As such, they occasionally are referred to every bit functional layouts. Their purpose is to process appurtenances or provide services that involve a variety of processing requirements. A manufacturing case would be a car shop. A machine shop by and large has divide departments where general-purpose machines are grouped together past office (e.g., milling, grinding, drilling, hydraulic presses, and lathes). Therefore, facilities that are configured according to individual functions or processes take a process layout. This type of layout gives the business firm the flexibility needed to handle a multifariousness of routes and process requirements. Services that employ process layouts include hospitals, banks, auto repair, libraries, and universities.

Improving procedure layouts involves the minimization of transportation cost, distance, or time. To attain this some firms use what is known as a Muther grid, where subjective information is summarized on a grid displaying diverse combinations of department, work grouping, or auto pairs. Each combination (pair), represented by an intersection on the filigree, is assigned a letter indicating the importance of the closeness of the two (A = admittedly necessary; Due east = very important; I = important; O = ordinary importance; U = unimportant; X = undesirable). Importance more often than not is based on the shared use of facilities, equipment, workers or records, work menstruation, communication requirements, or safety requirements. The departments and other elements are then assigned to clusters in order of importance.

Advantages of process layouts include:

Flexibility. The house has the ability to handle a diversity of processing requirements.
Price. Sometimes, the general-purpose equipment utilized may be less costly to buy and less costly and easier to maintain than specialized equipment.
Motivation. Employees in this type of layout will probably be able to perform a diversity of tasks on multiple machines, as opposed to the boredom of performing a repetitive task on an assembly line. A procedure layout as well allows the employer to use some type of individual incentive system.
System protection. Since there are multiple machines available, procedure layouts are non especially vulnerable to equipment failures.

Disadvantages of process layouts include:

Utilization. Equipment utilization rates in process layout are oft very depression, because car usage is dependent upon a variety of output requirements.
Cost. If batch processing is used, in-process inventory costs could be high. Lower volume means higher per-unit costs. More than specialized attention is necessary for both products and customers. Setups are more frequent, hence higher setup costs. Fabric handling is slower and more inefficient. The span of supervision is small due to job complexities (routing, setups, etc.), and so supervisory costs are higher. Additionally, in this blazon of layout bookkeeping, inventory control, and purchasing ordinarily are highly involved.
Defoliation. Constantly irresolute schedules and routings make juggling process requirements more difficult.

Product LAYOUT

Product layouts are plant in menses shops (repetitive assembly and process or continuous flow industries). Menses shops produce loftier-volume, highly standardized products that crave highly standardized, repetitive processes. In a product layout, resources are arranged sequentially, based on the routing of the products. In theory, this sequential layout allows the entire procedure to exist laid out in a straight line, which at times may be totally defended to the production of only one product or product version. The menses of the line can and then exist subdivided so that labor and equipment are utilized smoothly throughout the functioning.

Two types of lines are used in product layouts: paced and unpaced. Paced lines can use some sort of conveyor that moves output along at a continuous rate then that workers can perform operations on the product as it goes by. For longer operating times, the worker may take to walk aslope the piece of work equally it moves until he or she is finished and can walk back to the workstation to brainstorm working on another part (this essentially is how car manufacturing works).

On an unpaced line, workers build upwards queues between workstations to permit a variable work pace. Nonetheless, this type of line does non work well with large, bulky products because too much storage space may be required. Also, it is difficult to balance an extreme variety of output rates without meaning idle time. A technique known equally associates-line balancing can be used to group the private tasks performed into workstations so that at that place volition be a reasonable balance of work among the workstations.

Product layout efficiency is often enhanced through the use of line balancing. Line balancing is the assignment of tasks to workstations in such a way that workstations have approximately equal time requirements. This minimizes the amount of fourth dimension that some workstations are idle, due to waiting on parts from an upstream procedure or to avoid building upwardly an inventory queue in forepart of a downstream process.

Advantages of product layouts include:

Output. Production layouts can generate a big book of products in a short time.
Price. Unit cost is depression as a result of the high volume. Labor specialization results in reduced training time and cost. A wider bridge of supervision also reduces labor costs. Bookkeeping, purchasing, and inventory command are routine. Because routing is fixed, less attention is required.
Utilization. There is a high degree of labor and equipment utilization.

Disadvantages of product layouts include:

Motivation. The system's inherent division of labor tin can issue in dull, repetitive jobs that tin prove to be quite stressful. Besides, associates-line layouts make information technology very difficult to administrate individual incentive plans.
Flexibility. Product layouts are inflexible and cannot hands respond to required organization changes—especially changes in product or process design.
Organization protection. The system is at risk from equipment breakdown, absenteeism, and reanimation due to preventive maintenance.

Stock-still-POSITION LAYOUT

A stock-still-position layout is appropriate for a production that is too large or likewise heavy to move. For example, battleships are non produced on an associates line. For services, other reasons may dictate the fixed position (e.chiliad., a hospital operating room where doctors, nurses, and medical equipment are brought to the patient). Other fixed-position layout examples include construction (due east.g., buildings, dams, and electric or nuclear power plants), shipbuilding, aircraft, aerospace, farming, drilling for oil, home repair, and automatic car washes. In order to brand this work, required resources must be portable then that they can be taken to the job for "on the spot" operation.

Due to the nature of the product, the user has trivial choice in the use of a fixed-position layout. Disadvantages include:

Space. For many stock-still-position layouts, the work surface area may be crowded and then that trivial storage space is available. This as well can cause fabric handling problems.
Administration. Often, the authoritative burden is higher for stock-still-position layouts. The span of control can be narrow, and coordination hard.

COMBINATION LAYOUTS

Many situations call for a mixture of the three main layout types. These mixtures are commonly called combination or hybrid layouts. For example, one firm may utilize a process layout for the majority of its procedure along with an assembly in one expanse. Alternatively, a firm may utilise a stock-still-position layout for the associates of its final product, but utilise assembly lines to produce the components and subassemblies that make upwardly the final product (e.m., aircraft).

CELLULAR LAYOUT

Cellular manufacturing is a blazon of layout where machines are grouped according to the process requirements for a set up of similar items (office families) that require similar processing. These groups are called cells. Therefore, a cellular layout is an equipment layout configured to back up cellular manufacturing.

Processes are grouped into cells using a technique known every bit group engineering science (GT). Group applied science involves identifying parts with like design characteristics (size, shape, and function) and like procedure characteristics (type of processing required, bachelor machinery that performs this blazon of procedure, and processing sequence).

Workers in cellular layouts are cross-trained and so that they tin operate all the equipment within the jail cell and take responsibility for its output. Sometimes the cells feed into an associates line that produces the final product. In some cases a jail cell is formed past dedicating sure equipment to the production of a family unit of parts without actually moving the equipment into a physical prison cell (these are chosen virtual or nominal cells). In this way, the firm avoids the burden of rearranging its current layout. Even so, concrete cells are more common.

An automated version of cellular manufacturing is the flexible manufacturing system (FMS). With an FMS, a computer controls the transfer of parts to the diverse processes, enabling manufacturers to achieve some of the benefits of product layouts while maintaining the flexibility of small-scale batch production.

Some of the advantages of cellular manufacturing include:

Toll. Cellular manufacturing provides for faster processing time, less material handling, less work-in-process inventory, and reduced setup time, all of which reduce costs.
Flexibility. Cellular manufacturing allows for the production of small batches, which provides some degree of increased flexibility. This aspect is greatly enhanced with FMSs.
Motivation. Since workers are cross-trained to run every auto in the jail cell, colorlessness is less of a factor. Also, since workers are responsible for their cells' output, more autonomy and job ownership is present.

OTHER LAYOUTS

In addition to the aforementioned layouts, there are others that are more than appropriate for employ in service organizations. These include warehouse/storage layouts, retail layouts, and role layouts.

With warehouse/storage layouts, order frequency is a fundamental gene. Items that are ordered frequently should be placed shut together virtually the entrance of the facility, while those ordered less frequently remain in the rear of the facility. Pareto analysis is an excellent method for determining which items to place near the entrance. Since 20 percent of the items typically represent lxxx percent of the items ordered, it is not difficult to determine which xx pct to place in the most user-friendly location. In this manner, club picking is fabricated more efficient.

While layout blueprint is much simpler for pocket-size retail establishments (shoe repair, dry cleaner, etc.), retail stores, unlike manufacturers, must take into consideration the presence of customers and the accompanying opportunities to influence sales and client attitudes. For example, supermarkets place dairy products about the rear of the store so that customers who run into the store for a quick gallon of milk must travel through other sections of the store. This increases the run a risk of the customer seeing an item of interest and making an impulse buy. Additionally, expensive items such as meat are ofttimes placed so that the customer will see them frequently (e.g., pass them at the end of each alley). Retail chains are able to take advantage of standardized layouts, which give the customer more than familiarity with the store when shopping in a new location.

Office layouts must be configured then that the physical transfer of information (paperwork) is optimized. Communication too tin be enhanced through the use of low-rising partitions and glass walls.

A number of changes taking in identify in manufacturing have had a direct event on facility layout. One apparent manufacturing trend is to build smaller and more compact facilities with more than automation and robotics. In these situations, machines need to be placed closer to each other in order to reduce material handling. Some other tendency is an increase in automated textile handling systems, including automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/AR) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs). In that location also is movement toward the use of U-shaped lines, which permit workers, material handlers, and supervisors to see the entire line easily and travel efficiently between workstations. So that the view is not obstructed, fewer walls and partitions are incorporated into the layout. Finally, thanks to lean manufacturing and just-in-time product, less space is needed for inventory storage throughout the layout.

R. Anthony Inman