Testimonials

"Our plans to develop a major plant expansion were greatly enhanced by the all-day CAD planning session that we had with RBE. It was a dynamic and powerful tool that accomplished much more in the time than I had expected. It provided us with the clear ability to put our needs together with a workable layout and course of action."

John Berthelsen

President, Suttle-Straus
Waunakee, Wisconsin

Articles

Pica Scanner

Planning for Plant Expansion

By Hal Ettinger

 

In order to determine whether your present plant can fulfill your present and future space requirements, you need to know whether your plant can accommodate--architecturally and engineering wise--your needs. Obviously, if you cannot bring in additional electric service, or accommodate additional bathrooms or break areas for new employees, add machinery to production areas, or increase your shipping and receiving area, then these are signals that you need to relocate or add onto your existing facility.

Sometimes a re-layout of the plant will work, but you have to be realistic when assessing your current and future needs before making a decision. And what one must do when determining whether a re-layout, addition, or relocation will be the better decision, is to make a very careful and honest analysis of where you are going to be as a printer in 5 to 10 years. Think about the market that you want to service, and the kind of equipment you will need to buy as a result. Once you've answered these questions, you need to ask yourself whether your current work space can be home for the next 5 or 10 years. Ask whether it can grow with your organization.

I know it may be difficult to answer these questions honestly because no one really wants to move. Most printers would rather patch on as they go along. Plus, some printers become established in a particular area and don't feel they can move. So rather than move, you stay in a shop that is bogging you down.

As you can see, there are a lot of factors to consider when deciding which option to choose--retrofitting the existing plant or relocation--and you must choose the one that will benefit you the most in the long run.

Re-layout

If a decision is made to stay in the space you are occupying there are two options. You can either redesign your existing layout, or you can add onto your existing structure by either renting space in the adjacent building or constructing space on an adjacent lot. In any of these cases, we would be analyzing the space in order to justify and allocate how it will be used for current and future conditions in order to be most productive. And every square foot should be justified to maximize its potential--from the customer walking in the door through to shipping.

Most of the time we see areas that are dead and unused or unusable because they are filled up with old boxes, or inventory isn't stored efficiently. These and other considerations are very critical in optimizing your plant space under conditions where you can't expand and you must make extremely efficient use of the space you have. You may be currently wasting 15 to 20% of your floor space, which is quite common. That means that if you have 50,000 square feet of plant, chances are that you are not utilizing about 7,500 to 10,000 square feet that could be turned into productive space.

Relocating

If you decide you want to relocate altogether, you will be doing something somewhat similar to a re-layout in that you will be trying to optimize your space for current and future requirements and won't want to waste any space. And again, you will be developing a layout that will suit your present and future needs. Architecturally speaking, we need to translate the two-dimensional layout into three dimensions--construction, which refers to the buildability of the layout. So if you decide to relocate to an existing structure, we must look carefully at the structure's existing conditions because these conditions (location of main electrical systems, plumbing, HVAC, structural walls, posts, etc) will define the parameters of your layout. If you do not pay attention to these elements of the layout, many elements of the layout will have to be comprised and, often, extra money will have to be spent trying to implement an idea that isn't practical. This brings us to the last phase of retrofitting or relocating as it relates to layout.

Development of Layout & Implementation

In an event: re-layout, addition, or relocation, the critical issue in regard to developing layout is this: what are the architectural and engineering elements that we have to work with? At this point, we take your ideas and make them work. By this I mean finding out what the best product flow is within your production area, the interaction between the departments (customers, prepress, press, etc.) and coordinating the architectural and engineering aspects in order to pull these elements that contribute to optimum work flow together.

These are some of the elements that dictate layout in many instances, and will cause less headaches if they are used to complement the layout and vice versa. Otherwise, you can get yourself involved in a situation where you're fighting your environment and paying above and beyond what it should cost to move your facility in a smooth and painless manner.

Planning Check List

1. Develop A Plan
1. Select a committee to oversee the process from initial concept to implementation.
2. Select an in-house Plant Manager who is responsible for the following:
   • Collecting, compiling, and reporting data
   • Work with all departments
   • Act as a liaison between plant planning committee and consulting firm

Define Company's Goals/Establish Needs

1. Look at all factors involved:
1. Space
2. Overall size
3. Budget
4. Marketing plan (i.e. business development)

Define Objectives and General Checklist

1. Develop an organized chart
   1. Involved players names, roles, responsibilities, and the information they are to provide
2. General checklist
   1. Short/long term goals
   2. Present and future equipment needs
   3. Present and future employee needs
   4. Complete equipment list
   5. Estimated cost & budget restriction
   6. Time schedule of new equipment delivery
   7. Establish optimum move window
3. Check background information to insure that "soft" costs are accounted for:
   1. Design
   2. Escalation
   3. Construction contingencies
4. Benefits
1. Maintaining schedule
2. Establishes realistic goals
3. Insures design appropriateness
4. Building/department size
5. Engineering system
6. Optimizes budget

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