Material flow-based analysis of manufactured housing production plant facility layout

Manufactured homes are built in an assembly line similar to other manufactured products. However, production process, facility layout and material handling system of the Manufactured Housing Industry in the United States is still primitive when compared to other technologically advanced manufacturing facilities like automobile etc. The facility layouts of the manufactured housing plants consist of main-stations, sub-stations and feeder stations. Visit to most of the factories reveal the fact that the stations within the plants are arranged without any prior planning and evaluation and as a result the layouts are inefficient. This has led to the necessity of incorporating the advanced technologies used in industrial engineering to help develop an efficient facility layout for a given manufactured housing plant. The goal of this research is to analyze the impact of material-flow on the facility layout of a manufactured housing production plant, and to outline the comprehensive process steps for evaluating the layout-design based on the material-flow. In order to do this, the material movement between the stations and the material handling system requirements for a manufactured housing plant is understood and a material-flow based quantitative model for the facility layout is developed. The model is then analyzed; layout alternatives are generated and evaluated in a layout evaluation software, namely FactoryFLOW, on the basis of the material movement cost, distance traveled and frequency of trips. Finally, the process steps for evaluation of the facility layout alternatives are developed in the form of a Process Flow Diagram.