Chapter 3
Flow Systems, Activity Relationships, and Space
Requirements
Introduction 2
• Flow
• Flow of materials, people, equipment, information, money, etc.
• Flow into, within and from manufacturing facility
• Space
• The amount of space required in the facility
• Workstation specification, department specification and other space
requirements
• Activity relationships
• Activity relationship is the key input in facilities design
• Defined by flow relationships, organizational relationships, environmental
relationships, process relationships and control relationships
Introduction (Contd.) 3
• Data Needed for Layouts:
• Frequency of trips or flows of materials measure the interaction between
facilities
• Flow
• Floor space available and space requirements
• Space
• Adjacency requirements between pairs of activities
• Activity relationships
• Shape and size and Location restrictions for facility
Flow Systems 4
Flow process have three characteristics:
1. Subject or item to be processed.
2. Resources required for processing or transportation.
3. Communication: procedures that coordinate the resources.
Types of Manufacturing Flows:
1. Flow into the facility (Material Management System)
2. Flow within the facility (Material Flow System)
3. Flow out of the facility (Physical Distribution System)
1. Flow into the facility 5
Resources:
• Production control and purchasing functions
• Vendors
• Transportation and material handling to move the material or parts
• Receiving and storage
Communication:
• Production forecasts
• Inventory records
• Purchase order
• Move tickets
• Electronic data Interchange (EDI)
• Kanbans
• Etc.
2. Flow within the facility: 6
- Determined by the type of departments.
Resources:
• Production control and quality control depts.
• Manufacturing, assembly, and storage depts.
• Material handling to move materials, parts, supplies.
• Warehouse
Communication:
• Production schedules
• Work order release
• Move tickets
• Kanbans
• Route sheets
• Warehouse records
3. Flow out the facility 7
Resources:
• The customer.
• Sales and accounting departments and warehouses.
• The material handling system and transportation equipment.
• Distributors of the finished product.
Communication:
• Sales orders
• Shipping reports and releases
• EDI invoices
• etc
Material Flow Systems 8
Patterns of flow may be viewed from the perspective of flow within
workstations, within departments, and between departments.
1. Flow within workstation:
• Motions studies and ergonomics considerations are important in
establishing the flow within workstations.
• For example, flow within workstations should be simultaneous,
symmetrical, natural, rhythmical, and habitual.
Material Flow Systems 9
(contd.)
2. Flow within department
- Examples:
• Locating machines within a department
• Laying out a hospital emergency room.
- Dependent on the type of department (process or product department).
- For a product department, the flow will follow the layout of the machines.
The possible flow patterns are:
• End-to-end
• back-to-back
• Front-to-front
• Circular
Product Department
Process Department
Page 10
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
End-to-end
back-to-back
Front-to-front
Circular
Page 11
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
• For a process department, little intradepartmental flow. Most is between
the department and aisles.
• Three examples of configurations:
• Parallel Aisle
• Perpendicular
• Diagonal (not used often, assume one
way aisles which are not common) Aisle
Aisle
Aisle
Aisle
Page 12
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
• In the case of mechanized and automated systems involving the use of
continuously running conveyors, shuttle carts, automated guided vehicles,
robots, and others.
• Several primitive flow structures or patterns:
1. The line flow pattern:
• Straight-line
• U-shaped
• S-shaped
• W-shaped
2. The spine flow pattern
3. The loop flow pattern
4. The tree flow pattern
Page 13
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
• Line flow
• Spine flow
• Tree flow
• Inner loop
Page 14
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
3. Flow between departments:
Flow typically consists of a combination of the four general flow
patterns:
• Straight-line
• U-shaped
• S-shaped
• W-shaped
Page 15
Material Flow Systems (contd.)
• An important consideration in combining the general flow patterns is the
location of the entrance (receiving department) and exit (shipping
department).
• Often these locations are fixed due to building construction
• Flow within facility should conform to the restricted locations of the
entrance and exit.
• Examples, see Figure 3.25:
• Entrance and exit can be: at the same location, on adjacent sides, same
side but opposite ends, and on opposite sides
Page 16
Page 17
Flow Planning
• Effective flow planning is a hierarchal planning process.
• Effective flow between departments depends on effective flow within
departments, which in turn depends on effective flow within workstations.
Page 18
Flow Planning
Flow planning principles:
1. Maximize direct flow path:
• Maximize directed uninterrupted flow paths. That is, the path does not
intersect with other paths.
• Avoid backtracking which increases the length of the flow.
Page 19
Flow Planning
2. Minimize flow: work simplification approach
• Eliminating flow by delivering materials, information, or people directly to
the point of ultimate use and therefore eliminate intermediate steps.
• Plan for the flow between two consecutive points to require as few
movements as possible – preferably one.
• Combine flows or operations where possible. Plan for the movement of
material, information, or people to occur simultaneously with processing.
Page 21
Flow Planning
3. Minimize the cost of the flow:
• Minimize manual handling by minimizing walking, manual travel
distances, and motions.
• Eliminate manual handling by automation or mechanizing the flow .
This lets workers devote their time to their operations – not material
handling.
Page 22
Flow Planning
• Possible indicators that the flow needs improvement:
1. Many units on carts, shelves, or conveyors waiting to be assembled.
2. Parts on the floor in bulk containers waiting to be assembled.
3. Shelving along the walls full of rejected parts or other items that may not
have been disposed of.
4. Numerous rework benches, or a large amount of rework being performed on
production benches.
5. Expensive machinery that is idle.
6. People expediting high-priority work orders.
7. Production status meetings being held every day.
8. Trash on the floor.
9. Anything in the aisles except people and transport equipment.
10. Operators making partial assemblies because of a part shortage.
Page 23
Flow Planning
• Signs of a good general flow pattern
• A flow starts at receiving and terminates at shipping.
• Straight and short lines of flow
• Minimum backtracking
• Materials moved directly to point of use
• Minimum WIP
• Flow pattern is easily expandable, new processes can easily be merged in
Page 24
Departmental Planning
Department Planning
• Concerned with forming planning department (production, service, support
,..etc.)
• Production Planning departments are collections of workstations to grouped
together during the facility layout process.
• As a general rule, planning department needs to combine workstations that
perform “like” functions.
• “Like“ Functions
• Similar products
• Similar components
• Similar processes
Page 26
Department Planning (contd.)
General Types of Layouts
• Production line layout
• Large stable demand for a standardized product (engine,
automobile)
• Fixed position layout
• Demand exists for large, awkward, difficult to move product such
as aircraft
• Product family layout
• Medium demand for medium number of similar components
• Process layout
• Combine workstations that perform similar processes
• Hybrid layout
• Composition of several of the different types of layouts
Page 27
Department Planning (contd.)
Volume/Variety Classification
Page 28
Guide for Combining Workstations Table 3.1
Support, administrative, and service planning departments have been traditionally
treated as “process” departments, because similar activities are performed
Page 30
Process Layout Example
Milling
Lathe Department Department Drilling Department
L L M M D D D D
M M D D D D
L L
L L G G G P
G G G P
L L
Grinding Painting Department
Department
L L
A A A
Receiving and
Shipping
Assembly
Page 31
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology)
• Product Family or Group Technology departments aggregates medium
volume-variety parts into families.
• Machines required to manufacture the part family are grouped to form
cells (cellular manufacturing)
• Cells are formed in different ways based on similarity
• Machines
• Employees
• Materials
• Tooling
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
• Manufacturing cell operation needs minimum external Support.
• Often designed, controlled and operated using JIT, TQM and Lean
manufacturing concepts
• Benefits of cell manufacturing:
• Reduction: inventories, space, paperwork, equipment, transportation,
etc.
• Simplification: communication, handling, scheduling, etc.
• Improvement: productivity, flexibility, quality, customer satisfaction, etc.
Page 36
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
• Successful implementation of cells requires addressing:
• Selection: identification of machine and part types for cell
• Design: layout, production and material handling requirements
• Operation: determining lot sizes, scheduling, number of operators
• Control: methods used to measure the performance of the cell
• Several approaches for selection issues e.g. heuristics, mathematical models
and clustering techniques.
• Different ways of clustering algorithms
• One simple clustering techniques is called direct clustering algorithm (DCA)
• Example of DCA : see page 102 (text book)
Page 37
Direct Clustering Algorithm (DCA)
1. Sum the 1s in each column and each row of the machine-part matrix.
2. Order the rows (top to bottom) in descending order of the number of
1s in the rows.
3. Order the columns (left to right) in ascending order of the number of
1s in each.
4. Sort the columns. Beginning with the first row of the matrix, shift to
the left all columns having a 1 in the first row. Continue row-by-row
until no further opportunity exists for shifting columns.
5. Sort the rows. Beginning with the leftmost column, shift rows
upward when opportunities exist to form blocks of 1s.
6. Form cells such that all processing for each part occurs in a single
cell.
Page 38
Example 3.1: Applying the DCA method to group 5
machines
Step 1
machine #
part # 1 2 3 4 5 # of 1s
1 1 1 2
2 1 1
3 1 1 1 3
4 1 1 2
5 1 1
6 1 1 2
# of 1s 3 2 2 2 2
Page 39
Steps 2&3 Step 4
machine # machine #
part # 5 4 3 2 1 # of 1s part # 5 4 2 3 1 # of 1s
3 1 1 1 3 3 1 1 1 3
6 1 1 2 6 1 1 2
4 1 1 2 4 1 1 2
1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2
5 1 1 5 1 1
2 1 1 2 1 1
# of 1s 2 2 2 2 3 # of 1s 2 2 2 2 3
Step 5 Step 6
machine # machine #
# of
part # 5 4 2 3 1 # of 1s
part # 5 4 2 3 1 1s
3 1 1 1 3 3 1 1 1 3
6 1 1 2 6 1 1 2
5 1 2 5 1 2
4 1 1 2 4 1 1 2
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 1 1 2 1 1
# of 1s 2 2 2 2 3 # of 1s 2 2 2 2 3
Page 40
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
• “Bottleneck” machines in cellular manufacturing are those bind two cells
together.
• When bottleneck condition exist:
• Locate bottleneck machines at the boundary between cells.
• Duplicate machines
• Consider redesign of parts
• Consider outsourcing processing
Page 41
“Bottleneck” machines
Page 42
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
• The design of the cellular manufacturing system can be Decoupled
cells or Integrated cells :
1. Decoupled cells:
• uses a storage area to store parts after the cell has finished with
them
• that acts as a decoupler (making the cells and departments
independent of each other).
• If another cell needs them, it will retrieve them from there.
• This led to excessive material handling and poor responsiveness.
Page 43
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
Integrated cells: Cells and departments are linked through the use of
Kanbans or cards.
• Production cards (POK): to authorize production of more components or
subassemblies.
• Withdrawal cards (WLK): to authorize delivery of more components,
subassemblies, or raw materials.
• Kanban: means “signal” and commonly uses cards to signal the
supplying workstation that is consuming workstation requests more
parts
Page 44
Product Family Departments
Manufacturing cells (Group Technology) (contd.)
In general there are two types of production control systems:
1. “Push” production control system:
When workstation completes its set of operations, it pushes its finished
parts to next workstation. If the supplying workstation operates faster
than consuming workstation, parts will begin to build up.
2. “Pull” production control system:
Supplying workstation did not produce any parts until its consuming
workstation requested parts. This system called Kanban which means
signal.
The final step is the layout of each cell: U-shaped arrangement of
workstations significantly
Page 46
Activity Relationships
Activity Relationships
Five main types:
• Organizational relationships – influenced by span of control and reporting
relationships.
• Flow relationships – including the flow of material, people, equipment,
information, and money.
• Control relationships – level of automation, centralized vs. decentralized
material control.
• Environment relationships – including safety considerations like temp, noise,
humidity, and dust.
• Other process relationships - such as floor loading, water required by machines,
etc.
Page 49
Measuring Flow
• Measuring flow is very important in evaluating alternative arrangement of
departments within a facility.
• Quantitative: If large volumes of materials, information, and people moving
between departments.
• Qualitative: If not a lot of physical movement between departments, but
significant communication or organizational relationships.
Page 50
Measuring Flow
• Quantitative flow measurement
• Mileage chart:
• distance between departments
• Note the diagonal values are zero
• Not necessarily symmetric: one-way aisles, different entry and exit
points in the department.
• Measures of distance
• Euclidean, Squared Euclidean, Rectilinear, Aisle Distance, Adjacency,
Shortest path
A B C
A 12 18
B 6 6
C 18 14
Example of Mileage chart Page 51
Measuring Flow
• Quantitative flow measurement:
• From-to chart:
• Flow between departments.
• does not have to be symmetric (Example: No definite reason for the
flows from stores to milling to be the same as the flows from milling
to stores)
From
To
A B C
A 420 125
B 60 350
C 75 25
Page 52
Measuring Flow
A From-to chart is constructed as follows:
1. List departments in logical sequence.
2. Establish a measure of flow for the facility that accurately indicates
equivalent flow volumes. (Some common unit of measure).
3. Based on the flow paths for the items to be moved and the established
measure of flow, record the flow volumes on the from-to chart.
Page 53
Measuring Flow
• Example:
A firm produces three products, 1, 2, and 3. Product 1 and 2 are of the same size
and weight, while product 3 is twice as the size of products 1 and 2 and requires
twice effort to move it.
• The departments include five departments A, B, C, D and E.
• The overall quantities to be produce daily and routes are
• Product 1 : 30; A →C → B →D →E
• Product 2 : 12; A → B → D → E
• Product 3 : 7; A → C → D →B →E
• Construct the from –to matrix.
Page 54
Measuring Flow
• Example (contd.). From-to matrix
To A B C D E
From
A 12 30+2*7=44 0 0
B 0 0 30+12=42 2*7=14
C 0 30 2*7=14 0
D 0 0 0 30+12=42
E 0 0 0 0
Page 55
Measuring Flow
• Qualitative flow measurement:
• Relationship chart:
• Determine the relative importance of different departments being close to
each other.
• 6 Closeness Relationship Values:
A - Absolutely necessary
E - Especially important
I - Important
O - Ordinary Closeness okay
U - Unimportant
X - Undesirable
Page 56
Measuring Flow
Example of Relationship chart:
Production
O
Offices A
U I
Stockroom O E
A X A
Shipping and Receiving U U
U O
Locker Room O
O
Tool room
Page 57
Measuring Flow
To construct the Relationship chart:
1. List all the departments.
2. Get closeness information. How to get this information.
3. Define the criteria for assigning closeness values and itemize and record this
information on the chart. (example: frequency of use high, medium, low)
4. Get feedback from sources of information.
Avoid too many A’s and X’s.
Page 58
Relationship Chart may include the closeness values in
conjunction with reasons for the value
Page 59
Converting From-to chart to Relationship chart
Page 60
Converting From-to chart to Relationship chart
Page 61
Space Requirements
Space Requirements
• The amount of space required in the facility is difficult to estimate
because:
1. Uncertainty: change in demand, change in product mix, new
technology, new methods.
2. Department managers tend to overstate their needs.
3. Parkinson’s Law: Department expands to fill up its space.
Page 63
Space Requirements (contd.)
• Modern Manufacturing methods are reducing space requirements:
• Product are delivered to point of use in small batches.
• Decentralized storage.
• Less inventory (products are pulled with Kanbans).
• More efficient layout arrangements (manufacturing cells).
• Quality control at the source
• Companies are downsizing (leaner organizations, focused factories,
outsourcing, etc.)
• Offices are shared
For manufacturing: Start with the workstations, then departments
Page 64
Page 65
Page 66
Space Requirements- Workstation Specification
• Three components: Equipment, materials, personnel:
• Equipment:
• Footprint of machines (machinery data sheets)
• Machine travel (all directions)
• Machine Maintenance
• Plant services
• Materials:
• Receiving area (and storing inbound materials)
• Holding In-process materials (WIP)
• Storing outbound materials
• Waste and scrap
• Tools, Fixtures, jigs, dies, and maintenance materials.
Page 67
Space Requirements- Workstation Specification
• Personnel:
• The operator
• Material handling
• Operator ingress and egress
• For the first two points consider ergonomic principles:
• No long reaches
• Minimize manual handling
• Safety
• For operator ingress and egress:
• Min 30-inch aisle if two stationary objects.
• Min 36-inch aisle if one stationary and one working machine.
• Min 42-inch aisle if two working machines.
Usually, a good idea to simulate operator tasks to verify the validity of estimates.
Page 68
Space Requirements- Department Specification
• Departmental area requirements are not simply the sum of the
areas of the individual workstations.
Page 69 Bakery – Production department
Space Requirements- Department Specification
• Some areas can be shared between workstations: tools, housekeeping items,
storage areas, operators, Kanban boards, etc.
• Additional space is required for material handling, WIP buffers, storage cabinets,
office areas, visual displays, aisles, etc.
• For both workstation and department often end up with a range on space
estimates. (allowance factor)
Page 70
Space Requirements- Aisle Specification
Two types:
• Main – this is the current focus
• Departmental (Aisle allowance estimate – see table 3.4)
• Want the aisle to promote effective flow
• How wide depends on how big the moving things. See table 3.5 in the book for
examples.
• Do people and material need to be pass at the same time. Two-way flow?
• Minimize curves, non-right-angle intersections, and dead ends.
• Aisles should lead to doors if possible.
• Be certain to note where columns are located so that they are not located in the
aisles.
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