The ability to design and operate manufacturing facilities that can quickly and effectively adapt

to changing technological and market requirements is becoming increasingly important to the

success of any manufacturing organization. In the face of shorter product life cycles, higher
product variety, increasingly unpredictable demand, and shorter delivery times, manufacturing
facilities dedicated to a single product line cannot be cost effective any longer. Investment
efficiency now requires that manufacturing facilities be able to shift quickly from one product
line to another without major retooling, resource reconfiguration, or replacement of equipment.
Investment efficiency also requires that manufacturing facilities be able to simultaneously make
several products so that smaller volume products can be combined in a single facility and that
fluctuations in product mixes and volumes can be more easily accommodated. In short,
manufacturing facilities must be able to exhibit high levels of flexibility and robustness despite
significant changes in their operating requirements. In industry sectors, it is important to
manufacture the products which have good quality products and meet customers demand. This
action could be conducted under existing resources such as employees, machines and other
facilities. However, plant layout improvement, could be one of the tools to response to increasing
industrial productivity. Plant layout design has become a fundamental basis of todays industrial
plants which can influence parts of work efficiency. It is needed to appropriately plan and
position employees, materials, machines, equipments, and other manufacturing supports and
facilities to create the most effective plant layout.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-03783-7_6
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4757-1355-8_26
http://www.academia.edu/6485034/A_review_of_applications_of_Analytic_Hierarchy_Process_i
n_operations_management
Importance of Plant Layout:
The layout of a plant is quite important in view of the above definition but the importance of a
layout may greatly vary from industry to industry.
The possibility of attaining the best possible layout is directly proportional to following
factors:
The Weight, Volume or Mobility of the Product:
If the final product is quite heavy or difficult to handle involving costly material handling
equipment or a large amount of labour, important consideration will be to amount the product
minimum possible e.g. boiler, turbines, locomotive industries and hip building companies etc.
Complexity of the Final Product:
If the product is made up of a very large number of components and parts i.e. large number of
people may be employed for handling the movement of these parts from shop to shop or from
machine to machine or one assembly point to another e.g. automobile industry.
The Length of the Process in relation to Handling Time:
If the material handling time represents an appreciable proportion of the total time of
manufacturing, any reduction in handling time of the product may result in great productivity
improvement of the industrial unit e.g. Steam Turbine Industry.

The Extent to which the Process Tends towards Mass Production:

With the use of automatic machines in industries for adopting mass production system of
manufacturing the volume of production will increase. In view of high production output, larger
percentage of manual labour will be engaged in transporting the output unless the layout is good.