Moving your factory can be a challenging and traumatic experience. It’s also a great opportunity to custom-design a factory layout that facilitates a step change in the performance of the business. The layout of a factory has an enormous impact on the efficiency of a business. However, few companies actually plan their facilities by the use of a formal layout.

Planning the right layout should start with a detailed review of how materials flow through the factory. A workflow relationship diagram should be produced that identifies the path and volumes of all products as they move from process to process, highlighting bottlenecks and delays. Planned future developments, such as new processes or product lines, should also be included. It’s vital to think longer-term – under-sizing the building may mean further extension work in the future, while over-sizing could mean wasted investment.

Getting it right
A good layout will support better customer service and enable better quality control to be provided, by ensuring that products have a suitable location in the factory where the risk of damage is reduced, and improve working conditions. Above all, the right design should minimise loss of production for the implementation phase and optimise the practical physical changes to existing structures.

The BPIF provides expert factory planning and layout support and over the years we have helped many firms save money and increase efficiency through this. In many projects, where a layout change is required within existing premises and even where businesses are similar, solutions will vary significantly or may be constrained by building shapes. Ostensibly, a layout is a means of indicating where each piece of kit is to be located; in reality the layout should be the result of a functional design for optimising the performance of the business in its entirety.

Andrew Brown is BPIF Corporate Affairs Director