Plant layout design for a steel fabrication factory

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 transportation. 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 3 alternatives plant layouts, which are process layout design, modified process layout design, and product layout design. After analyzing, the product layout design gives the best result compared to existing design and other 2 alternatives. The unnecessary activities was eliminated, the material flow is smoothed out. Those reduce the production time to 27.36%, average flow time to 58.25%, cycle time to 20.78%, labour cost to 47% compared to existing plant layout, which result in increasing the productivity. Moreover, the new design also reduces the risk of having the accident while running the production.