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	NAPL's Executive Insights
	The Logic and How To of Plant Layout
	By Hal Ettinger

Understanding the logical movement of people, materials and product traveling between the front door and the shipping dock is the primary challenge of developing an efficient plant layout. The ultimate goal is to optimize the workflow of people and product now and into the future.

If the production process was simply a matter of one person handing their work to the next person in line, like a bucket brigade, from the receptionist on down to the delivery driver, the task of designing an efficient layout would be child’s play. As long as each one in the line was right next to their upstream and downstream partner, the production line could snake around any which way without any noticeable change in production output. And indeed, the major operations of a printing facility (prepress, pressroom, bindery, etc.) can be treated as if each were a single individual that simply hands its work “down the line”. But even with this simplest model we can easily see that there is nothing like a bucket brigade taking place inside a printing plant. Each department has multiple interactions with the others – the pressroom gets “handed” plates from the prep department at the same time that it gets “handed” paper from the warehouse. It’s releasing press sheets to the bindery while it gets production schedules from administration. It may need pre-cut stock from the cutter that’s located in the bindery, or have to deliver press sheets to the customer viewing area. Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, it’s personnel are wandering away to find places to smoke, sit, eat or make a run to the toilet. Our metaphorical Mr. Pressroom has a lot on his hands, and we haven’t even mentioned how he has to juggle all the work-in-process, staging, and other material handling that is completely internal to the department.

For any given department, there really are two layouts to be considered. The first is the layout of the overall plant and how and where Mr. Pressroom fits into it. Let’s call it “the grand scheme”. In developing “the grand scheme” we have to decide how much of the floor space Mr. Pressroom will get. We have to figure out which of the many other departments Mr. Pressroom really needs to be adjacent to and how he will interact with those neighbors. Will he have an “open door policy”, or do we want him to have some privacy and (perhaps more importantly) keep the drafts out.

The second layout to be considered is the “internal plan” of the department. Here we need to think about equipment footprints and internal traffic and staging. You can see that the two layouts have to be related, more specifically, the internal layout of the department is constrained by the department’s place in “the grand scheme”. Just as it wouldn’t make any sense to develop a plan of a pressroom without knowing where the plates and paper were coming from and where the skids of printed stock were supposed to go to, it doesn’t make any sense to try to design a plant layout from the inside out.

This leads us to the first and most important rule of layout design: Good plant layouts always develop from the general to the specific, never the other way around. If you begin the process of designing your layout from a department adjacency perspective rather than from an individual department your chances for success will increase.

Some people will challenge this by asking; “Can’t you just start with a certain layout for one area and then develop the other areas to accommodate that?” This is the way that people who are not experienced typically approach a design problem. They usually have some specific idea that they’ve become fond of. It might be a certain arrangement of equipment, or maybe even just the particular location of, or view from, their office, but they’ll grasp this nugget like one of those blind men who groped the elephant, and they’ll try to develop their vision of the whole facility around it. It’s like trying to draw a landscape by starting at one corner of the paper and sketching your way across the sheet to the other. By the time you get to the opposite corner the drawing has become distorted and badly composed. As anyone who has made a profession in design knows, each element of design influences, and is influenced by, many other elements. It’s only when these elements have been selected, positioned, and configured in accord with some higher governing principle that they form a coordinated, efficient system or, in this case, an efficient and productive plant layout. In designer’s language, the general principles that govern the overall design are called design programming or scope of work.

This brings us to the 2nd most important principal of good layout: The choices that are available at any given point in a design are determined by the decisions that preceded it and constrains those parts of the design that remain to be developed.. In other words, thou shall know thy design program and always keep it foremost in thy mind. This sounds like it should be obvious, yet I am constantly struck by how often this aspect of design work is overlooked.

Here’s an example:

This client was planning a new facility. Early in the design we had to carve out half of a building bay from a mezzanine that adjoined the new pressroom because the owner was confident that he would need that space for a new die cutter. The resulting configuration of the mezzanine was less than desirable, and the pressroom could have done without this complication as well, but the owner was adamant that his “grand scheme” required this machine and it was an important part of the program. Alternative placements were discussed and discarded, and the major design problems that it presented were resolved, albeit to no one’s complete satisfaction. It may not have been ideal, but that was the only place that it could go and we had to deal with it. Each time that we made a change or addition to the design and found it in our way, we worked around it. In a short time the owner, staff, architect and engineers just got used to the mezzanine cut-out and didn’t even think about why it was there.

Later on, however, the business plan for the die cutter fizzled. The CFO managed to convince the owner that the economics of this particular equipment purchase just didn’t measure up next to the profit potential of doing what they knew best in their new and expanded pressroom.

So, with all the headaches that this piece of equipment had caused to the layout of this facility your betting that the designers celebrated by jumping right on the layout and fixing the wayward mezzanine, right? You would be wrong. The mezzanine remained exactly as it was, like a fish with a big bite out of the middle for weeks afterward. No one even thought to change it because as far as they were concerned this issue had been argued and settled weeks ago when it had originally come up. They didn’t remember exactly how or why the mezzanine had wound up the way it was, but they remembered that there had been several meetings, a number of layout alternatives, and a lot of time spent over the issue and that whatever had been done had been done for very good reasons. Everyone had moved on to other issues that were pressing in order to finish the design.

It was only days before the drawings were due to be released that a minor modification was brought up during a meeting. The pressroom supervisor didn’t like the location of his office because he couldn’t see all the presses and he was too far from production planning. He knew it was his last opportunity, and even though he had brought it up before in previous meetings he mentioned his dissatisfaction as an afterthought as the meeting was winding down. Everyone in the meeting knew that his objections had been discussed before, and that the current office location was the best one under the circumstances. In order to appear polite, however, they looked at the plans again and the architect half-heartedly reiterated the old reasons why each alternate location was unacceptable. In the course of this recitation someone pointed to the area where the mezzanine had been butchered and said with a sigh, “It’s too bad your office can’t be here.” “That would be a perfect spot.” Almost everyone else at the table nodded sympathetically and agreed with the speaker’s assessment, but a young woman who had not been part of the previous design meetings spoke up to ask why it was that the office couldn’t be put there. “Because,” said a member of the design team, “that’s a high bay area for future equipment.” The woman nodded her understanding, as the engineer, who had taken the electrical branch service for the die cutter out of his electrical drawings, began to panic. “Wait a minute,” he said defensively to the architect. “I thought you told me that that piece of equipment was eliminated.”

“No, that’s right”, the plant manager cut in, as the architect began to feel queasy. “The die cutter is out of the plan.” “Well then why can’t my office be there?” said the pressroom super, as keen as ever. The architect, who had just been thinking about where in the conference room he could possible hide, now realized that with everyone still focused on the press super’s problems he might still be able to claim victory and go home. “It can”, he announced triumphantly as if he knew it all along and was just waiting for the appropriate moment to unveil his creation. “And not only that, but we can now finish out the mezzanine and create that training area that you had asked for!”

The architect put on his best modest professional, “all in days work”, look in response to the excited expressions of approval that went around the room. In the future, he would remember this moment as the time when his professional acumen had saved his client from a costly layout mistake, rather than as a time when he was almost caught with his professional pants around his ankles.

Now about this time your probably shaking your head and wondering how it is that everyone involved in a major design effort, the client, the client’s staff and the consultants could miss a gaping hole in the mezzanine with nothing at the bottom of it. Such occurrences are not at all unusual. They happen with greater frequency and severity as one tends to lose sight of the overall building layout and the design program. The only way to combat this phenomenon is to frequently review the design program and initial layout alternatives and especially to reassess the whole design whenever any aspect of that program changes.

Setting Your Priorities

Often the emphasis and attention to detail is given to the main entry and front-end offices when designing printing facility. And no doubt this attention conveys a strong message to both customers and employees. But often overlooked in the excitement to impress with new offices are the Shipping and Receiving department. True, this is the least glamorous area of a plant, but when you consider almost all your revenues exit there, the shipping doors just may be your most important openings in the entire building. Shipping requires the same attention to detail as any other department when it comes to size requirements, configuration, amenities and location (to facilitate it’s effectiveness and efficiency)

It’s a bit odd, but layout planning can start from the back end (shipping) and move to the front (main entry). This logic allows for the dog to wag the tail not the other way around. But even before considering plant layout, you must consider what impact the site will have on and to layout planning. Given this back to front planning logic, the site influences how and where you ship and receive product, which then leads where shipping and receiving should be located on the site

Logic of Layout

Think of a rope. When it’s tugged, knotted, coiled, or shaped to take a form (a question mark would be appropriate), the entire length is effected. Layout is similar. Along it’s length (movement of people and product) all parts are impacted by any expansion, elimination of equipment, equipment installation, whatever. All parts make up one interconnect whole. Revisions like adding personnel, a department re-layout, or equipment installation impacts all areas in the plant sometimes in less than obvious ways. (for example re-routing of material handling aisle to accommodate installation of new equipment, reduction of WIP due to expansion of prep). Therefore, the first question you must ask yourself before focusing on any individual department or area intended for revision, How does it impact the movement of people and/or product throughout the entire plant?

By following the layout logic’s bouncing ball you can see
the inter-connection, which make up the whole.

>> Customer (market) determines Product
>> Product determines Warehouse and Equipment (prep, press/bindery)
>> Equipment locations determines Material and Personnel Workflow
>> Workflow determines location of Prepress, Office and Employee Entry
>> Employee Entry determines location of toilets/lockers, cafeteria, Human Resources
>> Office determines location of Main Entry

Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together, proving or disproving your layout theory until you get it right (adjacencies)

The Parts

Front end

entry

customer, conference rooms

accounting

sales

CSR’s

general work areas

private offices

misc. (main telephone/data, office supplies, break area, files, fax, mail/postage)

Prepress

conventional

pre-flight

digital/electronic

private offices (supervisor, production/scheduling)

misc. (supplies, files, ancillary support)

Production Cell

presses

bindery (finishing)

hand bindery

fulfillment

unique value added component

Warehousing

storage (raw materials, finished goods)

Shipping/Receiving Cell

shipping/receiving office

driver area

labeling and ready to ship

Waste Cell

pneumatic waste collect (bailed waste)

compaction

Production Support

Maintenance (parts storage)

Solvent Storage

Equipment support (air compressors, chill, etc.)

Battery charge

Employee Services

main locker/toilets

cafeteria

training / recreation

human resource

Just like assembling a puzzle, arranging the various pieces by shape and color, print out on a 3 x 5 index cards the 8 areas of the plant (if starting from scratch) or a departments various internal areas if only expanding one department. Arrange the cards by preferred. Walk through the placement of index cards to discussing movement of people and product. Re-arrange placement of cards to suite your needs. If it doesn’t work at this stage, do not proceed. Get it right at this stage or else your layout is going to flop. After all your chances of placing the 8 cards in the right order is pretty good. The real challenge is making it work in an existing building you plan on renovating, or on a restrictive site, or at your present location which is already a nightmare!

Do not work as a project team of one. Share your ideas and welcome new ideas. Encourage others to participate in the layout process as painful as it might become. It’s amazing how different people interpret the same problems found in the plant. You might interpret slow turn-around as an equipment related issue, which given your choice would be solved with the purchase of a new piece of equipment. The Production Supervisor, experiencing the same slow turn around issue, could interpret it as a manning (staffing) problem. What ever the case, inviting input by others will open doors which would not have been opened, and thereby addressing items which would have not seeing the light of day. Logical planning will bring ideas and allow for constructive dialogue.

Constantly Proving and Improving

As the air gets a little thinner each step you take to the summit of Everest, each phase of layout development gets a little harder.

So, where were we . . . .Oh yes back to the cards. When you’re feeling good about the overall adjacencies, the next critical step is to bring scale into the equation. Many a good man has thrown in the towel when scale enters the program. Let’s just assume every department is a square (width & length are equal). Cut out the shapes from some chipboard you have laying around the shop representing best guess square footage (sq. ft.) requirements. Scale brings a new challenge to putting the puzzle together. We can start by reassembling the scaled shapes in the same order as before. But quickly it become apparent keeping the previous adjacencies creates some interesting problems. For one thing, any sense of symmetry is gone (we all love symmetry), also some very interesting shapes appear (remember the objective is to put walls around material handling). Hang in their, Rome wasn’t built (or designed) in a day.

The key to resolving the scale and location challenge is to break away from the square department and stretch in either the x or y axis and by doing so allowing the flexibility to make the shapes fit together better. So a department figuring to be around 2300 sq. ft. (48 ft. x 48 ft.) can be shaped 31 ft. x 74 ft. Stretch and pull till your hearts content so the overall shapes is more realistic and workable.

Don’t forget the Employee Services and Production support areas, they may seem immaterial at this stage but I guarantee when the time comes to locate these areas, it will disrupt the apple cart big time if they are not accounted for at the beginning. If you wait you will end up compromising both the functionality of these spaces along with negatively impacting the areas around their forced placement. This is an important lesson. Playing catch up to layout design by adding areas or department not originally figured into expansion plans is very dangerous. Not that plant layout can not be flexible to expansion or twists and turns impacting the industry, but when you consider the rope analogy, all parts make up one interconnect whole.

Now for the Kicker

When you are comfortable with the adjacencies and footprint (shapes) of the departments, ask yourself; 1) are there any areas which might become underutilized? 2) is expansion possible without adversely impacting any of the other departments or areas? Again, if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t force it, go back and try again. The lesson here is that each step of the layout process can only be taken after you reach a level of real (not hoped for) confidence that it’s right. And keep in mind this exercise is a lot less expensive then if changes take place during construction.

Batting In the Clean Up Position…Building Columns and Equipment, just make it fit, I’m losing patience (equipment placement)

Well, now for the hard part. To see whether the department shapes will accommodate major equipment (in the areas of prepress, press room and bindery), while at the same time keeping in mind the roof will need to be held up by what is commonly called building columns (or sometimes called “ I didn’t know an 8 inch steel pipe could make my life miserable”). The sad reality is that equipment doesn’t run with a steel column through it. When making the equipment “dolls” for this exercise, measure the entire operating area, including the overall dimension of the equipment and area around the equipment required for it’s running (consoles, staging, work tables, etc.)

We will have to make another assumption and that is the building columns will be in a grid measuring 30 ft. x 40 ft. Actually we have some flexibility here. As long as the minimum distance is not less then 25 ft. (to avoid a lot of columns!) and maximum distance of 45 ft. (so you don’t begin to pay premiums on steel).

Draw the column grid on translucent material so it can be placed over the layout to see where there might be let’s just say interference. Place the equipment dolls in the appropriate departments, using good production flow judgement. This will take some time, be patient. When you figure this will be the seed that when germinated (built) will be your home for a very long time, the time you spend during this stage will be very worthwhile.

And Finally Growth, and now let’s revisit expansion scenarios (expansion)

Let’s see what we have done. The final test will be to objectively determine whether the overall layout can accommodate inevitable expansion. The real test of any layout is whether it has an extended shelf life. If it can accommodate unforeseen new markets, growth of existing customers, installation of equipment never considered. Facilitating expansion is the yardstick to measure successful plant layout.

Documenting Questions as you go along, finding out your memory is not as good as it used to be (thoroughness)

Questions will come up during this initial layout process which you need to document. The idea is to make sure all outstanding items eventually get addressed. Remember unanswered questions will not just go away on by themselves. They will eventually surface in the most inopportune time during the project.

Start a project file where you can put all you questions and all other related project stuff together. Organization is critical. Successful projects depend on organization.

Why Is This Necessary, or how come we can’t just build something?

Planning before you start construction is what will ultimately distinguish your plant from the others in the industry. It will give you the critical competitive advantage you are looking for due to it’s operating efficiencies. Following the elementary layout process described above will allow you to address many issues which eventual arise during either the construction phase of worse yet when you are up and running.

Remember to Error on the Side of Thoroughness

Some of the unturned stones you may be faced with:

Did we allow enough space for storage of office supplies; heck did we even have that figured in?
Does the receptionist area have a closet for customer coats; heck have we figured for closets at all?
Did we allow for a CTP system in Prepress because we know it’s coming?
Do we know what impact longer press lines will have on the pressroom’s material handling aisle and what were common deliveries?
Are the employees going to have lockers, did we allow for the space?

The amount of hours spent on the project’s front end, logically developing an efficient layout is directly proportionate to its success. More time, more chance for a successful layout. You must be committed to spending a lot of time during the initial planning phase before arriving at a layout that will work.

Now for the good news, there are techniques and tools used by individuals in the business of layout and plant design that makes this process less painful, while at the same time giving you the ability to contribute to this most exciting process of creating something that will stand as a testament of all your hard work. Feel better?

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The Logic and How To of Plant Layout