A manufacturing facility consists of five departments, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It produces four components having manufacturing product routings and production volumes indicated below.
1. Generate the from-to matrix and the interaction matrix. Use a transportation batch size of 1.
2. Assume A for 85-66 trips, E for 65-46 trips, I for 45-26 trips, O for 25-6 trips, and U for 5-0 trips. Use A=8, E =4, I = 2, O=1, and U =0 in your layout calculations. Employ the software FLAP to determine a suitable layout. Department 1 and 2 have areas of 20 units each while Departments 3, 4, and 5 are 30 units each.
3. Assume that it costs 5 dollars per unit distance for material-handling. Estimate the amount of the material-handling cost incurred per week for each layout recommended by FLAP.
4. Is it possible to improve on this layout?