ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PROCESS LAYOUT DESIGNS ADVANTAGES: 1. Can handle a wide range of products 2.

Rather immune to equipment failure 3. Lower capital costs 4. Less costly to maintain 5. Individual incentives can be used DISADVANTAGES: 1. In-process inventories can be high 2. Routing and scheduling pose continual challenges 3. Material handling can be costly and inefficient 4. Job complexities may narrow management span 5. Special attention may yield higher per-unit cost 6. Accounting, purchasing, and inventory control functions are complex ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRODUCT LAYOUT DESIGNS ADVANTAGES: 1. Amenable to high throughput 2. Capital costs spread over many units 3. Narrow tasks reduce training costs 4. Allows wide span of supervision 5. Low material handling costs 6. Routing and scheduling is automatic 7. High labor and equipment utilization 8. Accounting, purchasing, inventory control are fairly routine DISADVANTAGES: 1. Narrow tasks can be dull and repetitive 2. Individual incentives are impractical 3. Workers may not be motivated to quality 4. Hard to change volume 5. Highly susceptible to breakdowns 6. Capacity for quick repair a necessary expense ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF FIXED-POSITION LAYOUT DESIGNS ADVANTAGES: 1. Minimizes product movement 2. Workers can feel they make a significant contribution DISADVANTAGES: 1. Mobile equipment may increase per-unit cost 2. Scheduling activities becomes key challenge 3. Arrivals of material and equipment are critical 4. Storage space can be a problem 5. Coordination requires narrow management span 6. Accounting, purchasing, and inventory control functions are very complex