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“I am very happy with the layout that you put together for us. We are filling up the western side of the building's office space with a design company, a music company and a large format output device. We are going to be rebranding as the COT Media Group later this month. We now need to refine a few Standard Operating procedures to maximize the work flow. Things however are dramatically improved with the new layout. I will keep you posted and please feel free to have anyone contact me for a reference.”

Nigel Worme

Managing Director
COT Caribbean Graphics

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Printing News Midwest

Three Steps Toward A Successful Expansion

By Hal Ettinger

It's not enough to understand the printing process, or thinking you know how your plant can be more efficient when planning for your plant expansion. What I believe to be critical for the success of any building project is being able to determine or understand how your ideas can be implemented or translated into construction.

So while you can turn to me and tell me what you would like to accomplish with your work space, I can turn to you and tell you whether your idea has what I like to call the "buildability quotient". It may be a great idea, but will it work? Have you allocated space for maintenance and janitor storage areas or mechanical rooms? Can it be built at a reasonable cost? Have you provided for the third dimension? In other words, are your ceilings high enough? Another way to look at it is this: the architect/engineer wants to take your idea and find out whether the two-dimensional version on paper can be translated into a three-dimensional facility that will work as you have envisioned it.

Analyzing Your Shop's Conditions

Let's backtrack a bit and see how you would read the signs at your shop to know whether expanding is something from which you would benefit, a work space should be designed in such a way that you are able to perform the tasks you need to perform them, efficiently.

And the more work there is to do, the more efficient you need to be. Also, if you may want to diversify as you grow in order to fulfill the demands of the market, you need to pay attention to how you expand within the space you are occupying. If you are not expanding properly, or not expanding when you need to, problems will crop up.

These problems take many shapes.

The most obvious sign that you are due for a move or expansion is when there is overcrowding; people just don't have room to move around without getting into each other's way. When customers see this kind of overcrowding, it looks like mayhem. Obviously, it isn't good for your image if things appear chaotic, so from the customer relations standpoint, this is a signal to do something about your space requirements. But there are less apparent signs--less apparent that is, to the public. You may be spending extra time shifting skids, boxes, or equipment to handle the incoming or outgoing materials. Ideally, there should be enough room to move these items without having to shift things around to get at what you need to move.

Another sign will show up as a direct loss of revenue. If your people are spending their production time trying to work around conditions that don't allow them to work productively--such as moving from one staging area to another, then they are wasting their time walking around the plant when a more efficient layout could be speeding up their production times. But this happens, perhaps, because a machine was bought when it was thought that adding equipment could increase revenue, or because the work load was too much for the existing machinery. Yet, when the machinery is purchased, no one considers how the machine will be able to function effectively within the current plant layout. This problem is not commonly common to printers, but to manufacturers in general, who are more concerned with buying equipment that will theoretically enhance their productivity, than with buying space, which can also enhance productivity if it is parceled out properly.

A hopefully less common signal for expansion is diminished work quality in the shop. If the worker is in an environment that is not conducive to producing a quality piece, customers will be lost. This may be related to poor material flow, overcrowdedness in the shop, or poor equipment layout. Often these problems lead to low morale and sloppy work ensues. Another sign that expansion is necessary is when the present structural and engineering systems cannot handle additional loads. For instance, water, electrical, and plumbing requirements may be outdated or you may have outgrown the present building conditions. In other words, you can no longer install machinery because your electrical system can't handle it. Or, you can't hire additional personnel because the present plant lacks employee facilities. This, of course, is an immediate sign that requires immediate action.

Three Steps Towards Successful Expansion

  1. Analyze Your Plant's Current Conditions
    1. Overcrowding
    2. Material logjams
    3. Poor equipment layout
    4. Diminished work quality
    5. Systems overload
  2. Determining a Plant's Opportunities for Expansion
    1. Available structural and engineering systems
    2. Assessing the space for current and future needs
    3. Choosing re-layout or relocation
    4. Re-layout - finding space
    5. Relocating - evaluating present conditions
  3. Development of Layout and Implementation
    1. Layout: the Critical Issue
    2. Structural/Engineering considerations - buildability of the layout
    3. New facilities
    4. Retrofit of an existing building - complementing layout to structure

Determining your plant's opportunities for expansion in the next issue.

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