Production floor layout using systematic layout planning in Can manufacturing company

This paper presents an analysis on a production shop floor layout of a Can manufacturing company and the application of a systematic layout planning (SLP) procedure as an approach to solve the production shop floor layout problem. The relationship between machines, operation activities and material flow are used to determine the optimal location of each machine. SLP technique has been employed to design the two alternative production shop floor layouts and compare the performance between new layout and present layout in terms of material flow distance, traveling time, and traveling cost. The existing production process was inefficient, showing bottlenecks. The alternative layouts were developed based on minimum distance traveled between each pair of machine. It improved the company existing layout by reduced total movement traveled in production for material handling. The measurements covered the actual sizes of the layout and machines, activities between machines, distance between machines, and material flow between machines in the company. The proposed procedure is illustrated to be a viable approach for solving production shop floor layout design problem through a real-world case study. From the proposed two alternative layouts which are more economical, distance of the production flow can be shortened from 389.7m to 311.2m or 360.6m. The traveling time can be reduced from 901sec. to 750sec. and traveling cost can be reduced from 3.17 Birr to 2.98 or 2.19 Birr per each travel resulting increase in productivity.