A simulation-based approach for reconfiguration of facilities layout design under stochastic product demands

• Main Author: Ng Hock, Robert Leong
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General); TS Manufactures
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/29054/; https://plh.utem.edu.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=123846

Increased demand for customer-specific products, high cost and time pressure, as well as increasingly shorter product life cycles, has introduced new challenges to the manufacturing systems of the future. A factory layout is designed to obtain a physical arrangement of different entities of a facility that most economically meets the required output, in terms of both quantity and quality. An optimum and good arrangement can make the flow of the material free from any interruption and will increase the productivity. Manufacturing companies that undergo production expansion to their current facilities without careful facilities planning, would in most situations encounter many issues which could retard their overall operations. The constant changes and randomness of product demand under the stochastic demand continue to challenge production facilities to expand and consolidate their production facilities. When a transfer of production facilities to an existing plant is done without any expansion of current facilities, the reduced space at this plant will place a tremendous pressure on its current facilities, causing several production bottlenecks and impacting productivity. The aim of this study was to developed a systematic integrated approach to re-configure its current layout to an optimum layout under this stochastic product demand. The development of this integrated approach takes into consideration combining three key methodologies of the production optimization into a process flowchart, which are the Systematic Layout Planning (SLP), Theory of Constraint (TOC), and Discrete Event Simulation (DES). These 3 methodologies were selected based on their individual strength for the specific task required in developing this integrated approach. SLP for its sytematic layout planning, TOC to identify and eliminate constraint along the production flow and simulation to identify the optimun productive alternative layout virtually, before any physical implemetation. The steps of developing the alternative layouts are an integration of SLP with the TOC. The translated layouts were then validated by comparing the AS-IS layout with the alternative layouts and analyzed with the DES for the optimum layout in terms of productivity. The results from the case study reveal which of the alternative layout in the case, option 2 that developed through this integrated approach was the optimum layout. The throughput per hour of option 2 is improved by 15% over the existing layout and by 23% over the option 1 layout. Total distance covered for the forklift movement, with option 2 shows a much lower distance traveled than the other 2 layouts. This study reveals, the effectiveness of the developed integrated approach in developing the optimized layout with better material flow strategy.