THE IMPROVEMENT OF FACILITY LAYOUT CASE STUDY SAMCHAROEN PANICH CO., LTD.

Abstract

This research aims to improve the layout of the company's plant for the case study of a full-serviced printing business, which runs from designing to manufacturing and door-to-door delivery.  The company focuses on services catered to the needs of the customers to shorten interdepartmental transportation in order to lower costs. At present, a large number of raw materials are used for the production of ready-made printing products whereas the production process also requires many steps. Moreover, long distances in transporting goods between departments result in high transportation costs. This study was conducted by collecting relevant data on some topics: the production process, information on each department's area, number of trips, distance between each department as well as company's printing orders. The researchers used CRAFT (Computerized Relative Allocation Facilities Technique) as a main tool for this research. CRAFT is a computer program that helps design a plant layout by improving an existing layout or doing an initial layout. This is done by switching the placements of 2 or 3 departments, creating different options of layouts in order to find the most suitable design. The result of the study showed that the improved layout of the company's plant was able to reduce interdepartmental transportation costs from 1,010/day to 633.10/day or 37.31%.