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Purpose: This paper presents an implementation of the Six Sigma DMAIC approach implementing lean tools and facilities layout techniques to reduce the occurrence of different types of nonconformities in the carpeting process. Such carpeting process can be found in several industries including construction, aviation, and automotive. Design/methodology/approach: The improvement process was built through a sequential implementation of appropriate interconnected tools at each phase of the DMAIC approach. Utilized tools included: Pareto analysis, control charts, Ishikawa chart, 5-Whys, failure mode and effect analysis, process capability ratio, value stream map, and strategic layout planning. Findings: The carpeting process capability, quality of the product, customer satisfaction, and cost of poor quality were significantly improved. Explicitly, the sigma level was improved from 2.297 to 2.886 and the defects per million opportunities was reduced from 21615 to 3905. Originality/value: This paper has demonstrated the coherent implementation of several quality tools, value stream map, and systematic layout planning within the DMAIC approach.

Although many new technologies have been developed in facilities design, the systematic layout planning (SLP) procedure is the most widely used among enterprises and the academic world. The practical applications in a traditional SLP require intricate steps yet their results lack stability. It is difficult to attain reasonable results from alternatives derived via traditional SLP. This study proposes concepts and algorithms such as grouping, compounding, and hypothetical distance to modify procedures and enhance practicality in traditional SLP. The proposed modifications were applied to a case study. The results were superior to solutions derived from computer software simulations and by supervisors of the case company. This study believes that the proposed modifications and procedures can enhance the enterprise's ability in facility design.

The unequal area facility design problem has been studied in the literature generally by considering block layout separate from detailed design. This paper shows a tractable method for concurrently optimizing department shape and location within the facility, and selection of the appropriate number of Input/Output (I/O) stations per department and then optimally locating them. The distance metric used is the contour distance that measures transport between I/O stations along the perimeters of departmental boundaries. This distance metric better reflects allowable material flow for many industrial applications and it directly implies the optimal aisle structure for the facility.

This paper discusses the use of "nan traditional" techniques for solving facilities planning problems. especially where a large amount of heuristic data must be analysed. The application of expert systems in optimizing the planning of facilities and other computer based models are discussed and evaluated in order to determine the effectiveness of these systems. The future of expert logistic problems and are determined. The short. medium and long term application of expert systems as well as a case study of a system presently being used for facilities design are discussed. The integration of an expert system with/simulation and design modelling techniques is investigated.

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/07408179408966617 This paper addresses the joint facilities design problem of determining both demand and capacity with stochastic demand arrivals and stochastic processing throughput. Using a simple M/M/1 queueing model of a profit maximizing firm, we link marketing and production decision variables by recognizing appropriate congestion costs, and show that coordinated decision-making provides results superior to making demand and capacity decisions sequentially. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the model is robust with respect to its assumptions and parameters. An example illustrates the approach and demonstrates the application of the model.

FMS layout design is a complex process, involving a large number of alternatives, which contributes generously to the usual two-year FMS planning lead time. The need for a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use methodology or tool which can reduce this large number of alternatives to a more reasonable figure has motivated this research. A survey of existing FMSs was undertaken with the intention of identifying some of the more common (dominant) types of layouts, and to develop, if possible, a methodology for the selection of such layouts. However, almost every FMS was found to have a unique layout. For a given FMS under consideration, the capabilities with respect to the parts which can be manufactured is essentially given. The determining features of the resultant design of the FMS, therefore, are primarily based upon the design of the material handling system which integrates the FMS. However, as the number of machines in a FMS increase, the number of part sequences and alternate configurations increase at a dr...

In this paper we present an optimal solution procedure for the single period stochastic plant layout problem. The procedure only requires solving a “deterministic” from-to flow matrix. This “deterministic” matrix is a weighted-average of all from-to flow matrices. Since it may be difficult to estimate the probabilities of occurrence of the various states of nature, we developed a simulation model to test the robustness of our approach. For over 26,000 problems examined, the average error of using our approach was very small, only about one-sixth of one percent. Handled by the Department of Facilities Design/Material Handling.

A systematic approach is presented for the optimisation of ambient temperatures in the design of offshore production facilities. The approach addresses the effectiveness of the equipment to operate in a certain ambient temperature environment. By designing for ambient temperatures most likely to occur, rather than for extreme conditions, cost savings can be achieved. Potential cost savings could be of the order of 10%, depending on the duty of the equipment. The approach is illustrated for equipment for which ambient temperature is a major design consideration, such as heat exchangers and power generators.

Facilities design is closely related to efficient use of available resources. This paper presents a heuristic approach to solve two core problems of a good facilities design: facility location and facility layout. The latter group of problems will be solved for warehouse and production systems in particular. All these problems can be formulated as p -median clustering problems. Teitz and Bart (Oper. Res. 16 (1968) 955–961) developed the vertex substitution method to solve those problems. This paper introduces effective improvements on this heuristic. The approach is tested on a large number of randomly generated cases and on problems taken from the literature. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our method.

Facilities design, 3rd ed., by Sunderesh S. Heragu, Clermont, FL, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, 624pp., £51.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4200-6626-5. The third edition of Facilities design ...

(1998). Review of: “Facilities Design”Sunderesh Heragu. IIE Transactions: Vol. 30, No. 7, pp. 686-686.

The assignment of n facilities to n locations, with the objective of minimizing the total cost of the design, is known as the facilities design problem. For a problem of size 𝓃, there are 𝓃! feasible solutions, which can be represented by a frequency distribution of total costs. Recent statistical analyses have indicated that these distributions can be adequately described as gamma, and for many practical purposes the log normal or normal distributions give good approximations. The absolute mean of all the 𝓃!assignments can be easily calculated. For the assessment of the efficiencies of alternative layout designs, the knowledge of the standard deviation for total cost distributions associated with the facilities design problem is very useful to the facilities design engineer. A number of methods have been developed to compute the approximate value of the standard deviation from the basic data of flow and distance. This paper highlights the problem that such approximation may lead to a high level ...

The initial stage in the facilities design of cellular manufacturing systems involves the identification of part families and machine groups and forming cells possessing specific manufacturing capabilities. A new heuristic for the part family/machine group formation (PF/MGF) problem is presented in this paper. The distinguishing feature of this heuristic is its consideration of several practical criteria such as within-cell machine utilization, work load fractions, maximum number of machines that are assigned to a cell, and the percentage of operations of parts completed within a single cell. Computational results, based on several examples from the literature, show that this heuristic performs well with respect to more than one criteria. The heuristic also clarifies the source of various arguments in the literature concerning the ‘goodness’ of the solutions obtained by other researchers. An application of the heuristic to a large sample of industrial data involving 45 workcentres composed of 64 machines,...

The single period plant layout problem under uncertainty is discussed. Solution procedures for dealing with this problem, mainly the robustness approach, are recommended. The effectiveness of the robustness approach to this problem is illustrated by a numerical example.

The problem of facilities design involves the assignment of facilities to available locations so as to minimize the total cost. When N new facilities are to be added to an existing layout, there are N! feasible ways in which the assignment can be completed. Presented in this paper is a simple method to calculate the mean and the standard deviation of the total costs for the N! feasible layouts. The method is also useful for analysing the distribution of the total cost for the general facilities design problem when n' out of N facilities have been assigned to suitable locations and n (i.e. N-n') facilities are left for assignment. These parameters are of importance to the facilities design engineer who is solving the problem by any construction algorithm where the layout is completed by successive addition of facilities to locations. At any stage when the location of the first (n'- 1) facilities have been decided, the possible effect of assigning the n'th. facility to the jth location can be predi...

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the variability for distributions associated with the facilities design problem. An empirical model is proposed to estimate the variance of these distributions from the basic flow and distance data, which compares favourably with the one proposed by Wallace, Hitchings and Towill, yielding, in general, better predictions of the variance.

This paper deals with the minimization of an objective function which incorporates two conflicting criteria; cost minimization and closeness rating maximization, for facilities design problems. The objective function represents the difference of materials handling cost and the closeness rating with predefined weights assigned to both criteria. A heuristic approach is developed which takes an initial layout and improves it step by step using a pairwise exchange routine.

Presented in this paper is an heuristic algorithm to solve the problem of facilities design. As in other construction algorithms, facilities are picked up one by one and assigned to suitable locations. Facility i is assigned to location j by analysing the menu and the standard deviation of the total cost of all feasible layouts associated with the assignment. The location which minimizes the expected minimum assignment cost is selected for assigning a particular facility. Preliminary investigations have indicated the superiority of the proposed method over many of the existing techniques.

A model ia described which can be used to assist in the design of a facility, where the facilities design includes the selection of the materials handling system and the placement of departments within the facility. The model is entitled COFAD, an acronym representing Computerized FAcilities Design. COFAD selects the facilities design which approaches the minimal materials handling system cost. The input requirements and the utilization of COFAD are demonstrated via an example problem. Although it is shown that the model results in good solutions, due to the complexity of the design problem, no claim of optimality can be made.

We consider the problem of characterizing feasible locations for identical facilities in a tree network when lower bound constraints are imposed on distances between the facilities as well as between each fixed point and the facilities. We first eliminate from the network some fixed points whose associated constraints, are redundant, and then develop a sequential procedure for locating the maximum number of facilities. We relate this maximum number to the consistency of the distance constraints; the resulting information is relevant in solving a certain class of location problems on tree networks. Handled by the Facilities Design/Location Analysis Department.

SUMMARY The development of techniques of plant layout and facilities design is followed, the various techniques reviewed, some questions of criteria, methodology and validity of the various approaches are discussed, and a number of suggestions and problems amenable to future investigation are presented.