All blogs to the topics of factory planning, factory development, lean thinking or optimization.
The arrangement of departments in factory layouts is crucial for maximum output and minimum effort. Material flow is important, but not sufficient. Other relationships such as shared use of tools and clean zones must also be taken into account. The Activity Relationship Chart (ARC) helps to visually represent these relationships. A custom Excel implementation enables a flexible and clear representation and helps with evaluation in workshops
In every factory planning project, one is confronted at some point with finding an optimal arrangement of workcenters or production facilities. The SCHWERDTFEGER method is a good starting point. But it is very rough. It does not help in detail. The triangle method according to SCHMIGALLA is more interesting. It is more detailed, but graphically complex to create. With a little coding, however, this can be changed so that the method is really fun.
Can you program a simple simulation of production processes yourself? This question is explored in this blog article.
How do you automatically create a Excel macro for a work breakdown structure? This is not that difficult and will bring you undreamt-of time savings.
Why not use the work breakdown structure with automatic progress visualization for the project? The work breakdown structure is the mother of all plans in a project. In addition to the structure, it contains performance data, dates, costs and resources.
There is always a lot to do in projects. Time is usually short. Especially when there is no overall project management software available for creating plans or reports. In practice, this usually means boring routine tasks instead of important problem-solving. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Through steady continuous improvement (CIP) of manufacturing processes, many companies get to the point, to achieve only minor optimizations. Searching for major potentials lead many companies to the point to implement a multi-machine operation.
"Everything is in the flow". The statement of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (about 540-480. Chr.) applies in particular to the work of factory planning. Here, it is long-term use concepts with changeable processes to make. One way to visualize results or review concepts is the material flow simulation.
In the article "layout optimization with the circle method according Schwerdtfeger" I introduced the simple and effective method. The recognized problem of the method was: the preparations are quite time consuming. How to solve this, you will read in this blog.
There are a variety of methods for optimizing the layout in a factory planning process. In many cases the method of Schmigalla is used. However, it is quite complex to implement for the start. Much faster for first solutions are the graphic methods. A method for this is the circle method according SCHWERDTFEGER.
