Application of Simulation Technique for Improving Plant Layout in Ceramic Factory

This study aims to design and improve the plant layout of a ceramic factory by adopting Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) and the simulation technique. A ceramic company in northern Thailand is selected as a case study. Three ceramic products including roof tiles, wall tiles and dishware are studied due to their highest production volume. Through the SLP approach, information regarding the number of departments and machines, the area of the plant, the frequency of movement and the distance between each department is collected for the analysis of the relationship between departments. Two plant layout designs are then proposed; the first one is derived from the Computerized Relationship Layout Planning algorithm (CORELAP), and the second one is the process layout. For selecting the most appropriate layout design, five criteria are considered including total distance, the average total process time of each unit produced, ease of movement, material flow and safety. To determine the distance and the average total process time per unit, Distance-Based Scoring and simulation techniques are conducted while the ease of movement, material flow and safety are rated based on whether the company satisfies each criterion. Employing the weight scoring technique, the results report that the CORELAP layout is the most suitable for further implementation due to its highest weighted score equal to 2.536 while the process layout receives 2.386. Implementing the CORELAP layout can reduce the total distance by 16.76% while the average total process time per unit of the CORELAP layout is not significantly different at the significance level of 0.05 as compared to the existing layout.