Question

select an area in the building that is poorly designed and propose a layout change to that area.

Define if possible which of the 7 layout strategies your redesigned layout is.

What could you suggest to optimize (enhance) layout? And why?

Answer 1

An area of the organisation which I would like to change for the layout felicitation would be the manufacturing area of the plant of the goods produced. I would like to change this area because of the fact in the change in the environment as we are now getting more orders for producing more variety and we have to achieve economies of scale to make sure per unit cost is decreased and profits are increased. For this, the style layout from the product layout is now changed to process layout.

In a product layout, the sequence of machines are arranged in order of how different functions have to work accordingly for the product to be manufactured. Now as we have to increase our speed, we are now shifting towards the process layouts.

Process layouts could be described as those layouts where the resources are grouped together on the basis of similar processes and functions. This layout helps in increasing the speed of the processing systems. Large variety of items are produced easily in low volume to achieve better effectivity. Since so many different items are now produced, each item is having a unique processing requirement which is most efficiently achieved and clubbed together on similiar functions of various items. The products are then moved according to their unique needs.
The challenge is to maximise the efficiency and minimise the waste of movements in this layout. This process layout has to be designed in such a manner where every variety of item that has to be produced sharing similiar functional process is present at that function only. If this layout misses out this strategy, long distances would be covered by the items which would only increase the time and costs.

Thus, to add the value into system make sure your items are present where they are needed to be processed and clubbed together. This would help in achieving maximum effectivity and efficiency in the processes as you produce more and more different units and varieties in your organisation.