Material Flow-Based Facility Layout Analysis of a Manufactured Housing Production Plant

Abstract

The layout of an assembly line type production plant can be designed or evaluated based on multiple criteria including, qualitative and/or quantitative aspects according to Mehrotra et al. in 2005. This paper presents the process of quantitative modeling and evaluation of the facility layout alternatives of a manufactured housing plant based on the material flow aspect. Manufactured homes are built on an assembly line similar to other manufactured products. However, production process, facility layout, and material handling system of the manufactured housing industry in the United States are still primitive as compared to automobile or other technologically advanced manufacturing facilities. In many of the manufactured housing factories, the facility layouts are inefficient because the stations are arranged without any prior planning and evaluation. The facility layout technologies in industrial engineering are used to develop an efficient facility layout for a manufactured housing plant. A manufactured housing plant was used as a case study plant. A material-flow based quantitative model was developed and implemented in a facility layout evaluation software program, FACTORYFLOW by EDS in 2002. The software was used to analyze the impact of material-flow on the facility layout of the case study plant and to develop alternatives. These layout alternatives were evaluated based on the feasibility and the projected cost savings. The analysis results indicated that many alternatives will result in cost savings as compared to existing layout. Once the alternatives were generated and evaluated, the comprehensive process steps for evaluating the facility layout alternatives based on the material-flow were developed in the form of a process flow diagram.