Excellent production design and planning depends on accurate simulation of a high quality layout. A good layout project will always begin with an analysis of the production volumes of the products with common process sequences and tool requirements in order to create manufacturing families. For each of these families you can select the "best manufacturing practices" that need to be used and re-engineer the processes and tooling to fit the desired throughput and inventory requirements. Once you know the manufacturing practices to be used for each family, you can begin developing layouts through a systematic flow and non-flow evaluation process. Static flow and relationship analysis software tools FactoryFLOW and FactoryPLAN/OPT lend themselves to a systematic process leading to effective layout design in record time. 1 PRODUCT ANALYSIS A good layout project begins by evaluating the major product family divisions and determining the appropriate levels of detail for classificat...
David P. Sly