Facility layout redesign for efficiency improvement and cost reduction

In a competitive market the manufacturing companies have to produce cost effective products which can be realized by minimized production cost and higher effectiveness. The effective facility planning can significantly reduce the operational costs of companies. An adequate facility layout can result in the improvement of the performance of the production line. The Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is relating to location of objects (departments, workstations, machines, etc.) on a given site and the material flow between these objects. The goal of this study is to show the reasons, objectives and steps of a layout redesign process. The minimization of the workflow realized on the shop floor is an often applied an objective function during the layout redesign. Material flow efficiency is a commonly used term for the determination of the amount of workflow, which is the multiplication of material flow data and distance data. In this study, this mathematical method for workflow calculation is introduced. The described case study shows how the efficiency and reduced manufacturing cost of a real manufacturing system can be improved by re-layout design, while smaller floor space is needed for the production