Description
Manufacturing and service companies spend a significant amount of time and money in designingor redesigning their facilities. It is an extremely important function that must be addressed before products are produced or services rendered. A poor design costs a company a significant amount of resources and results in poor quality, low employee morale, and customer dissatisfaction. This book deals with the proper design, layout, and location of facilities. The first edition of this book was published in 1996.
This fourth edition is different from the previous editions in the following ways. Dated materials have been removed and new material introduced. Case studies covering layout, logistics, supply chain, warehousing, and materials handling are included in each chapter. New software for layout— Layout-iQTM—is included in the book. Several new material-handling equipment and systems are introduced. State-of-the-art topics in materials handling, warehousing, and logistics not found elsewhere are presented in this book. The author believes this book has an ideal blend of theory and practice.
The topics and chapters are reorganized as follows: Topics covered in Chapters 1 through 9 are suitable for undergraduate students. Chapters 10 through 13 are suitable for a graduate class, which can be included with Chapters 1, 6, and 8 in a semester-long graduate class. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the design and planning problems encountered in manufacturing and service systems. Various types of layout problems are discussed in Chapter 2: product analysis and equipment selection, as well as a discussion on personnel and space requirement analyses. Chapter 3 addresses process and material flow analysis. This chapter details the typical types of data required for process and material flow analysis and a method for data development and generation. This chapter also describes the commonly used tools for presenting layout designs and includes a detailed, real-world case study for data development and generation.
Of the seven chapters that deal with facility layout, two—Chapters 4 and 5—are devoted to the layout problem. Chapter 4 discusses traditional models for facility layout including the popular systematic layout planning (SLP) model in detail. It includes a layout project involving the SLP model and lists others that are of historical interest. Chapter 5 discusses algorithms for the layout problem. It also includes modern software used for layout in practice.
Chapter 6 covers group technology and cellular manufacturing at the elementary level. It also includes a project on machine grouping and layout that builds on the case study in Chapter 3. A detailed case study involving the use of PFAST for a real-world problem is also presented in this chapter. Chapter 7 covers materials handling in detail. It includes a case study, taxonomy of material-handling devices, an educational module titled “10 Principles of Materials Handling,” different types of material-handling devices with illustrations, and several design and planning models and algorithms. Chapter 8 shows an automated storage and retrieval system in action and discusses warehouse functions, different types of automated material-handling devices used in warehouses with illustrations, and design and operational models used for warehouse planning and management, as well as a discussion on RFID and a warehouse design, planning, and analysis software module.
Chapter 9 pertains to facility location and logistics management problems. Its emphasis is on simple-to-moderate mathematical models and includes a detailed case study. Chapter 10 covers advanced mathematical programming models for facility layout and is suitable only for a graduate class. Similarly, Chapter 11 covers advanced algorithms—optimal and heuristic—for layout problems. It also includes adiscussion on next-generation factory layouts. Chapter 12 discusses more complex models for the facility location problem that are suitable primarily for the graduate audience. Analytical queuing and queuing network models are discussed in Chapter 13. The MPA software is available at http://sundere.okstate.edu/downloadable software-programs-and-data-files. MPA is a software package that can be used in the solution of queuing models. A discussion of simulation as it applies to material handling and facility layout is also provided in Chapter 13.
A typical one-semester undergraduate course may include Chapters 1 through 9. A graduatelevel course could include Chapter 1 along with Chapters 7 through 13. Of course, other combinations for the graduate and undergraduate courses are possible depending upon the instructor’s interests and the student’s preparation.
This book comes with extensive supporting material, including software, data files for many of the numerical examples discussed in almost all the chapters, and PowerPoint files for 12 chapters. These are available at the following website: http://sundere.okstate.edu/book.