Introduction
A facility layout design is an important component of manufacturing and business projects. It is a multisided issue that includes qualitative and quantitative aspects like flexibility and the final price of materials. The article Application of an Aggregation Technique to Facility Layout Design Selection demonstrates the role of layout design in the overall performance of a company (Altuntas & Dereli, 2017). The main purpose of this paper is to summarize this article, highlighting the strategic importance of layout decisions.
Summary
Facility layout in manufacturing and other business projects has a significant impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall performance. One of the basic problems is to choose an appropriate location that allows incorporating in existing facilities. It requires various facility layout designs, and facility specialists together with other decision-makers have to select the best opportunity. There are different methods to rank alternative facility layout designs. However, every case is very unique. Hence, most existing approaches need to be adapted to specific circumstances and conditions. This work presents an aggregation method that allows putting facility layout design options in order. This technique is based on various traditional approaches. However, a linear programming model was used as the foundation for this method. The results of this research demonstrate the effective way for ranking alternative facility layout designs by means of the aggregation technique.
Facility layouts mostly aim at arranging a given number of facilities within a specific area or location. This arrangement is very important as it has a great impact on various aspects like material flow distance, the total number of manufactured products, the time spent on producing, the efficiency of facility utilization, and some others. However, two of the most prominent issues are the lower cost of production and increasing the quality of goods and their diversity. A successful facility layout might enhance these aspects. Therefore, investors should address the problem of a facility layout at the beginning of the implementation of the project. It is the major obstacle that needs to be dealt with to ensure the effective performance of a venture in the future. This fact highlights the importance of optimal facility layout decisions as they have a direct effect on the productivity of a company. This obstacle mostly rests on the shoulders of facility engineers.
They have to introduce different facility layouts due to the fact that there are various appropriate options for locating facilities. Also, there are qualitative and quantitative criteria that have to be taken into account. It makes engineers design a bigger number of alternative layouts. In order to achieve an appropriate facility layout, it is necessary to apply systematic and scientific techniques to assess all possible opportunities and put them in descending order. Relevant literature offers various solutions to a facility layout issue. Some of them are a genetic algorithm, weighted Euclidean distance-based method, synthetic immune system, and nonlinear programming model. Most of these methods are founded on heuristic principles. However, except for heuristic methods, some mathematical approaches might be applied to design an effective facility layout. Also, some authors suggest simulation as a method addressing a facility layout problem. Such approaches aimed at the minimization of the manufacturing costs and material flow distance. However, new facility layout options are usually derived from the simultaneous application of several methods in spite of the fact that they might be aimed at achieving similar goals.
In order to choose the best option, this study suggests using an aggregation technique. This technique is applied to make effective decisions for material selection. This is a significant issue that includes various criteria. Therefore, specialists have to consider all aspects relevant to a material selection and rank them in descending order. Furthermore, facility engineers should choose the most appropriate option to pass it on to decision-makers. However, ranks derived from traditional approaches are not always relevant to a material selection. The aggregation technique allows making such ranks, basing on the results of several conventional methods. This technique might also be applied to address other multisided decision-making obstacles.
This article describes the application of the aggregation technique, using the example that is composed of 18 facility layout design options. It includes ten divisions of different sizes that work in a packaging company. This study presents several facility layouts that were designed, considering qualitative and quantitative criteria like distance, shape ratio, availability, and support. The methods used in this study have various calculation processes. However, the aggregation technique allowed taking into consideration and applying all methods that addressed the existing layout problem. The aggregation technique was used to gather data as well. The results of this work provide the rank of options that is different from ranks based on the application of conventional methods.
Conclusion
A layout is a strategically important aspect that has a significant effect on long-run growth and stability. Specialists apply various methods to address the problem of an effective facility layout. However, this issue has some unique characteristics in each individual case. Therefore, it is necessary to combine different approaches in order to achieve the most effective results.
References
Altuntas, S., & Dereli, T. (2017). Application of an aggregation technique to facility layout design selection. Journal of Thermal Engineering, 3(1), 1078-1078.