Layout Design For Garments Industries
Layout is one of the key decisions that determine the long-run efficiency of operations.Layout has numerous strategic implications because it establishes an organization’s competitive priorities in regard to the capacity, processes, flexibility and cost as well as quality of work life, customer contact and image. An effective layout can help an organization to achieve a strategy that supports differentiation, low cost, or response (Heizer et al., 2000, p. 336). The layout must consider how to achieve the following:
1. Higher utilization of space, equipment, and people.
2. Improved flow of information, material or people.
3. Improved employee morale and safer working conditions.
4. Improved customer/client interaction.
5. Flexibility (whatever the layout is now, it will need to change).
Types of Layout
Layout decision includes the best placement of machines (in production settings), offices and desks (in office settings) or service center (in setting such as hospitals or department stores). An effective layout facilitates the flow of materials, people, and information within and between areas. There are various kinds of layouts. Some of them are as follows (Heizer et al., 2000, p. 336-337).
1. Fixed Position layout – addresses the layout requirements of large, bulky projects such as ships and buildings (concerns the movement of material to the limited storage areas around the site).
2. Process Oriented Layout – deals with low volume, high variety production (also called ‘job shop’, or intermittent production). It can manage varied material flow for each product.
3. Office Layout – fixes workers positions, their equipment, and spaces (offices) to provide for movement of information (locate workers requiring frequent contact close to one another).
4. Retail Layout – allocates shelf space and responds to customer behavior (expose customer to high margin items).
5. Warehouse Layout – it addresses tradeoffs between space and material handlings (balance low cost storage with low cost material handling).
6. Product oriented layouts – seeks the best personnel and machine utilization in repetitive or continuous production (equalize the task time at each workstation).
Assembly Line Balancing
Line balancing is usually undertaken to minimize imbalance between machines or personnel while meeting a required output from the line. The production rate is indicated as cycle time to produce one unit of the product, the optimum utilization of work force depends on the basis of output norms. The actual output of the individual may be different from the output norms. The time to operate the system, hence, keeps varying. It is, therefore, necessary to group certain activities to workstations to the tune of maximum of cycle time at each work station. The assembly line needs to balance so that there is minimum waiting of the line due to different operation time at each workstation. The sequencing is therefore, not only the allocation of men and machines to operating activities, but also the optimal utilization of facilities by the proper balancing of the assembly line (Sharma, 2009, p. 179).
The process of assembly line balancing involves three steps (Heizer et al., 2000, p. 356- 358):
1. Take the units required (demand or production rate) per day and divide it into the productive time available per day (in minutes or seconds). This operation gives us what is called the cycle time. Namely, the maximum time that the product is available at each workstation if the production rate is to be achieved.
Cycle time = production time available per day / units required per day
2. Calculate the theoretical minimum number of workstations. This is the total task duration time (the time it takes to make the product) divided by the cycle time. Fractions are rounded to the next higher whole number.
Minimum Number of Workstations = Σ Time for Task i / Cycle Time
Where n is the number of assembly tasks.
3. Balance the line by assigning specific assembly tasks to each workstation. An efficient balance is one that will complete the required assembly, follow the specified sequence, and keep the idle time at each work stations to a minimum.
Takt Time
Takt is German word for a pace or beat, often linked to conductor’s baton. Takt time is a reference number that is used to help match the rate of production in a pacemaker process to the rate of sales. This can be formulated as below (Rother and Harris, 2008, p. 13).
Takt time can be defined as the rate at which customers need products i.e. the products should be produced at least equal to takt time to meet the customer demand. Takt time works better when customer demand is steady and clearly known; but if the customer demand varies on the daily basis then it is difficult to calculate the takt time as well asbalance the production facility according to varying takt time. So if the orders are varying every day the information of actual shipments (not orders) should be gathered for last few months or years and takt time for the particular product should be calculated. In this way, the production can be balanced to meet changing customer demand.
Cycle Time
Cycle time is defined as how frequently a finished product comes out of our production facility (Rother et al., 2008, p. 15). Cycle time includes all types of delays occurred while completing a job. So cycle time can be calculated by the following formula.
Total Cycle Time = processing time + set up time + waiting time + moving time +inspection time + rework time + other delays to complete the job
To meet customer demand or monitor productivity the cycle time and takt time should be balanced in parallel. The higher cycle time than takt time may result the late delivery and customer dissatisfaction whereas shorter cycle time than takt time may cause the excess inventory or excess use of resource.
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