Facility Design in Operations Management - Essay Example

? OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT Facility Design 11/20 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Printing and Enveloping Facility 4 Evaluationand Analysis 4 References 8 Introduction Facility design or plant design’s primary objective is to ensure that the manufacturing process is efficiently carried out with minimal wastage in time and materials (Teicholz, 2001). This would include the strategic positioning of raw materials to ensure that it is immediately available at the time it is needed. The output of one process should be immediately available to the next process to save on transport time. Processes are not the only consideration in facility designs safety and health considerations are also part of the imperatives. Another consideration to keep in mind in facility design is the management of equipment replacement or its maintenance to comply with business continuity plans (Meyers & Stephens, 2004). There are instances where facility design also includes working with the landscape of the infrastructure to maximize the space. This is mostly true in facilities where the cost of real estate or usable space is expensive however, business operations and logistics consideration mandate that they work within the infrastructure. From a management perspective facility designs should provide operational efficiencies that would assure more production output. The facility design of a printing and enveloping facility of a billing service company will be examined. The primary focus of the analysis is to ensure that wastage in terms of time and product routing are not only exposed but quantified. However, health and safety factors including business continuity considerations will also be taken into considerations to ensure that the optimum design is being followed or not. The flexibility of the components of the facility will also be examined to determine their efficacy when it comes to their function. Attached is the rough drawing of the facility design using blocks to represent the major equipment in the facility. Given the nature of their business, the company name and location will be kept confidential for security reasons. Printing and Enveloping Facility loading area for bills for delivery and loading area for raw materials Postal Area Segregation Section Paper Cooling and Staging area for enveloping Print Paper and Envelop storage area. Evaluation and Analysis After the processing of the image of the bill in the computer, the generated file will be printed using the high speed laser printers. After the bill has been printed the bill forms will be staged and cooled at room temperature to prevent warping at the inserting machine. Once cooled the inserting machines will cut and fold the bills and put them into envelops together with promotional inserts if there are any. The inserted bill will then be segregated by their area to determine the amount of their postage. The posting machines will then mark each bill for postage. The segregation process will also segregate the bills that are faster and cheaper to deliver through a delivery service. The rest of the bills will be sent through regular postal mail service. The bills generated through this process are the customers of the clients of the mailing service that opted for printed bills instead of email or electronic bills. The areas to consider in the analysis of the facility design are the materials used and how they are affected by each of the process. An example of this is how the papers are heated by the printing process which makes it very pliant. This makes it difficult to cut and fold the bills for it to be properly inserted in envelops. Since this is a real concern it makes sense for air conditioners to cool the staging area after printing before they are inserted into the enveloping machines as indicated in the facility design. There are only two printers as against three inserting machines since the printer is much faster than the enveloping machines. The printers also generate a lot of heat that it makes sense to have more air coolers in the area to cool it down as well as the air around it. Cooling the air around the printing area will also cool the toner dusts including the paper dusts that will make these dusts heavier and eventually settling at the floor instead of actively circulating in the atmosphere. This will not only protect the operators but also the equipments. The design of the facility also considered the business continuity elements that would require constant maintenance of equipments. In case of failure in one of the equipments the facility will be able to process at diminished capacity. The segregation of printing and enveloping into two separate equipments instead of the normal one will allow the printing to continue if the enveloping machine is under maintenance. The placement of the storage room for the bill forms and the envelopes allows for the efficient loading of forms into the printers. The envelopes can also be readily loaded onto the enveloping machines during operations. The installation of exhaust vents directly over the printer allows for 75% of the hot paper dusts and toner dust to be taken out of the room. The installation of powerful exhaust ventilations at the floor area will suck out the heavy dusts that were made heavy by the air coolers. Making the loading area of bills and raw materials for delivery at the end of the production line will ensure that minimal effort is needed to load the bills that are ready for corrections. Spaces in between the equipment as roughly shown above ensure that personnel will be secured at all costs. The spaces at the sides of the production floor will ensure that newly delivered bill forms will be staged as well. During the analysis stage the most obvious question came up. “Why did the facility utilize a design that separates the printer from the enveloping machine to save on cost”. Savings will be realized from the elimination of the staging area for cooling purposes. When paper is heated or printed on using laser printers, the paper is subjected to extreme heat to ensure that the toner is fused with the paper. However, this process also warps the paper and makes it soft and that makes it difficult for the slicing or cutting portion of the enveloping machine. Since the enveloping machines works better with cooled paper rather than warm paper there is a need to cool it first. The staging area bombarded by cool air makes the paper ready for the cutting and enveloping machines. Computing the heat generated by the laser printers, the final size of the air coolers can be computed. It is essential that the correct size and capacity is installed to ensure that condensation does not occur. Condensation generally makes the environment within the facility susceptible to corrosion. By balancing the humidity within the facility condensation is eliminated if not reduced. References Meyers, F. E. & Stephens, M. P., 2004. Manufacturing Facilities Design and Materials Handling. 3rd ed. London: Prentice Hall . Teicholz, E., 2001. Facility Design and Management Handbook. 1st ed. London: McGraw-Hill Professioals. Read More