Optimisation of Facility Layout Problem at Automotive Industry a Case Study in Sabah

Abstract

The general Facility Layout Problem deals with the arrangement of machines within the facility based on the constraints such as material flow distance, volume of flow of products, material handling cost and operation sequence of product. The facility layout problem is directly linked with the efficiency of the facility or the manufacturing line. The objective of this project is to design a simulation based methodology experiment on designing an optimized facility layout and evaluating the proposed alternative layouts using ARENA simulation. This project is conducted at Benteng Motor Sdn. Bhd. in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Currently, the company is planning to expand their manufacturing plant and hence the company needs an optimized facility layout to maximize the product capacity and manufacturing throughput time on a minimum utilization of resources environment. An eight steps simulation methodology is being proposed to design an optimized facility layout. A manufacturing re-engineering scenario has been developed to improve the existing system. The proposed scenario was evaluated using Arena simulation student package. The scenario has significantly increases the production capacity up to 225%, decrease the manufacturing throughput time by 19% as well as increase the utilization of majority of the manufacturing resources more than 200%.