Importance of Layout
1. Economic in Handling: Nearly 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the manufacturing costs in accounted for by materials handling. Every effort should therefore be made to cut down on this cost,. Long distance movements should be avoided and specific handling operations must be eliminated. In a factory, materials have to be handled and therefore the answer to the question how best to avoid handling depends on layout.
2. Effective Use of Available Area: Every inch of the plant area is valuable especially in urban areas. Efforts should therefore be made to make use of the available area by planning the layout properly. Some steps for achieving this end area: location of equipment and services in order that they may perform multiple functions, developments of up to date work areas and operator job assignments for a full utilization of the labor force
3.Minimization of Production Delays: Repeat orders and new customers will be the results of prompt execution of orders. Every management should try to keep to the delivery schedules.
Plant layout is a significant factor in the timely execution of order. An ideal layout eliminates such causes of delays as shortage of space, long distance movement of materials spoiled work and contributes to the speedy execution of orders.
4. Improved Quality Control: Timely execution of orders will be meaningful when the quality of the output is not below expectations. To ensure quality inspection should be conducted at different stages of manufacture. An ideal layout provides for inspection to ensure better quality control.
5. Minimum Equipment Investment : Investment on equipment can be minimized by planned machine balance and location, minimum handling distances by the installation of general purpose machines and by planned machine loading. A good plant layout provides all these advantages.
6. Avoidance of Bottlenecks: Bottlenecks refer to any place in a production process where materials tend to pile upon produced at rates of speed, less rapid than the previous or subsequent operations. Bottlenecks are caused by inadequate machine capacity, inadequate storage space or low speed on the part of the operators. The results of bottlenecks are delays in production schedules congestion, accidents and wastage of floor area. All these may then be overcome with an efficient layout.
7. Better Production Control: Production control is concerned with the production of a product of the right type at the right time and at reasonable cost. A good plant layout is a requisite o f good production control and provides the plant control officers with a systematic basis upon which to build organizational procedures.
8. Better Supervision : A good plant ensure better supervision in two ways:
- Determining the number of workers to be handled by a supervisor and
- Enabling the supervisor to get a full view of the entire plant at one glance.
9. Improved Utilization of Labor: Labor is paid for every hour it spends in the factory. The efficiency of a management lies in utilizing the time for productive purpose. A good plant layout is one of the factors in effective utilization of labor.
10. Avoidance of Unnecessary and Costly Changes: And layout avoids frequent changed which are difficult and costly. The incorporation of flexibility elements in the layout would help in the avoidance of revisions.