Abstract—This paper presents an analysis on a production shop
floor layout of a Can manufacturing company and the
application of a systematic layout planning (SLP) procedure as
an approach to solve the production shop floor layout problem.
The relationship between machines, operation activities and
material flow are used to determine the optimal location of each
machine. SLP technique has been employed to design the two
alternative production shop floor layouts and compare the
performance between new layout and present layout in terms of
material flow distance, traveling time, and traveling cost. The
existing production process was inefficient, showing bottlenecks.
The alternative layouts were developed based on minimum
distance traveled between each pair of machine. It improved the
company existing layout by reduced total movement traveled in
production for material handling. The measurements covered the
actual sizes of the layout and machines, activities between
machines, distance between machines, and material flow between
machines in the company. The proposed procedure is illustrated
to be a viable approach for solving production shop floor layout
design problem through a real-world case study. From the
proposed two alternative layouts which are more economical,
distance of the production flow can be shortened from 389.7m to
311.2m or 360.6m. The traveling time can be reduced from
901sec. to 750sec. and traveling cost can be reduced from 3.17
Birr to 2.98 or 2.19 Birr per each travel resulting increase in
productivity.
Keywords—systematic layout planning; production floor;
material handling; Can manufacturing