[CHAPTER

7: PHYSICAL FACILITIES]
PRINCIPLES OF INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT
PLANT LOCATION
The nature and emphasis of the factors in
plant location vary among industries and with
changing technical and economic conditions.
Some industries have tended to follow their
markets in the location of their plants; other,
such as the textile industry have located around
the sources of power; still others, the iron and
steel industries, have tended to seek the source
of their raw materials.
STEPS IN SELECTING PLANT SITE
There are three main steps in locating a
plant.
1. Selection of the region in which the
plant is to be located, usually requires
consideration of these five factors: (1) proximity
to the market; (2) proximity to the necessary
materials; (3) availability of transportation
facilities; (4) adequacy of public and private
services such as power, water, fuel, and gas; and
(5) favorable climatic conditions.
STEPS IN SELECTING PLANT SITE
2. Selection of the particular community.
Which of all the communities in the chosen region
can best supply the needs of the individual
enterprise.
1. a labor supply that is adequate in numbers
and in types of skill required;
2. wage scales that are competitive with or
lower than those paid by other firms in the same
industry;
3. other enterprises in the community which
are complementary or supplementary as regards
raw materials, products, labor demands, and skills
used.
STEPS IN SELECTING PLANT SITE
4. a friendly and cooperative attitude
toward industry
5. moderate taxes and the absence of
restricting laws and ordinances
6. favorable living conditions and
standards which label the community for both
key and rank-and-file employees as a good place
in which to live.
STEPS IN SELECTING PLANT SITE
3. Selection of the exact plant site in the
favored community. Alternative communities
may have to be considered if no available or
adequate plant site can be found in the first
community selected.
PLANT BUILDINGS
In selecting the plant buildings, a decision
must first be made between the single-story
building and the multi-story building.
The single-story structure, with its fewer
columns and servicing equipment installed in
overhead trusses, permits greater flexibility of
plant layout. It provides for more uniform
illumination, is easier to expand by simply
moving a wall, gives greater floor-loading
capacity with less vibration, and requires lighter
foundations. It permits easier handling and
routing of materials and facilities supervision.
PLANT BUILDINGS
The multi-story building makes more
efficient use of land space and generally results
in lower construction costs per square foot of
floor space and in lower heating costs. Vertically
arrange production areas are possible, which
make for more compact layouts and permit the
gravity flow of materials.
PLANT SERVICES
Conditioned Air. Industrial air conditioning
in its broadest sense requires control over
temperature, humidity, dust, motion, purity
(freshness and bacteria), and odors. Also, there
is increased acceptance of comfort conditioning
as a factor in maintaining morale and creating
good public relations.
EMPLOYEES SERVICES
Included in the category of employee facilities
are locker rooms, rest rooms, showers, water coolers,
eating facilities, time clocks, plant hospital, and firs-aid
equipment. Criteria for the design of any of the above
installations dictate that they be:
1. adequate in capacity for the employee
concentrations required;
2. readily accessible to the bulk of employees
with a minimum of lost production time;
3. easy to keep clean and sanitary; and
4. located and accessible for east of
maintenance.
SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS
The design and construction materials for the
plant buildings are often a function of safety
considerations for the operating and residents near
the plant. Good lighting, noise control, and
employee facilities do contribute to better work
performance, and a major share of this
contribution is through the reduction of lost-time
accidents. Some specific safety factors are:
1. High-hazard material 3. Utilities
2. Construction 4. Passageways
PLANT LAYOUT
Good layouts today are based on the
principle of flow. Such evidences of steady flow as
regular movement of production, absence of
bottleneck operations, and minimized backtracking
all combine to shorten the manufacturing cycle and
reduce the amount of material in process. There is
also the matter of flow of people – the
arrangement of employee facilities, aisles, plant
entrances, and parking areas for uncongested
traffic.
MANUFACTURING CONSIDERATIONS
To obtain an overall view of manufacturing
considerations in plant design, production
processes can be grouped into three (3) general
classifications.
1. Layout by Product for Serialized or
Production-Line Manufacture
2. Layout by Operation for Job-Lot
Manufacture
3. Layout by Stationary Material Primarily for
Manufacture of Large Parts and Assembles.
LAYOUT PREPARATION
There are certain tools of plant layout in
common use today which are a distinct aid in
making or improving of any plant. The first of these
is the process-flow chart, a graphic map that
follows materials through its manufacturing cycle
and records the sequence of the elements of that
cycle as they occur.
The process-flow chart permits a process to
be visualized in such a compact from that possible
improvements are usually readily discerned.
PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT
The basic manufacturing processes are
determines ad part of production planning. The
next step is to select each item of productive
equipment and its tooling, jigs, fixtures, and
gages as best fits the specific product, process,
and production requirements. Where
production machinery already available and
adaptable to the production plan, it will rather
well define the operations to be performed.
SELECTION
One of the first decisions in the selection
of equipment concerns the degree of flexibility
or adaptability desired.
Machine tools can be classed as either
general purpose or single purchase.
General-purpose machines are the more
flexible and constitute the bulk of machine tools
in use today. These types of machines is
designed to perform one or more operations on
a variety of sizes and items.
SELECTION
Special-purpose machines are designed to
do one job and that job alone. Such machines
generally possess the advantage of performing
specific operations more rapidly that do general-
purpose machines – an important factor in
volume manufacture.
AUTOMATION
It is defined as the addition of handling
and control equipment to automatic machines
for continuous automatic production through a
series of operations without human guidance
and control. In manufacturing, it takes two
forms:
1. Continuous, embracing a complete
process, fabrication, or assembly.
2. Segmented, intermittent automation of
sections of a process, fabrication, or assembly
with intervals and storage facilities for banks of
materials among groups of automated
equipment.