Layout planning for fabrication vessel and tank manufacturing

Abstract

This research aims to study, analyze, and improve the plant layout of the case study factory, i.e. a steel fabrication company, in order to reduce the production time, labour cost, and safety level. This research is also based on industrial engineering and engineering management knowledge such as plant layout, work-study, and work measurement. After studying the existing plant layout, it is found that it is a poor plant with limited space. Because of complicated material flow, limited space, unsuitable location of departments, this result in the bottleneck, excessive use of time in production and transportation, high risk of accident within the factory. All the problems are the bases for analyzing and defining the way of improvement. The method of improvement is to relocate the department, and machine along with the measurement of the production time in the new location area. After improvement, there are 4 alternatives plant layouts, which are process layout design, product layout design, fixed layout design, and combination layout design. After analyzing, the combination layout design gives the best result compared to existing design and other 3 alternatives. The unnecessary activities is eliminated, the material flow is smoothed out. Those reduce the production time to 14%, labour cost to 14% compared to existing plant layout which result in increasing the productivity. Space area increases 26% and all raw materials are in place properly. Moreover, the new design also reduce the risk of having the accident while running the production with currently equal to zero.