PLANT LAYOUT FOR GT AND PBC

The economic success of the Japanese in manufacturing, has been largely due to their very high rates of stock turnover. A principle reason for this has been their use of simple material flow systems, coupled with Just-in-Time Production Control. This combination can be found in the West in companies which use Group Technology and Period Batch Control. An important factor in the success of such systems lies in the methods used to plan Plant layout. This paper describes such methods, and shows how they reduce throughput times and simplify operation scheduling.