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Process and Material Flow Analysis
Published in Sunderesh S. Heragu, Facilities Design, 2022
In a fixed-position layout, the product does not move from one location to another. Instead, the processes and equipment for making the product are brought to where the product is located. This layout is usually adopted when the manufactured or processed product is bulky and cannot be easily transported or transported at all, such as in shipbuilding and repair; aircraft manufacturing and servicing; and dam, road, and house construction industries. Automobile manufacturing companies (e.g., Nissan) that manufacture high-end models (e.g., Infiniti) also have adopted the fixed-position layout for some of their operations. Due to stringent quality and manufacturing requirements, minimal product movement is desired in some processes. The advantages of fixed-position layout are that the product, which is usually bulky and expensive, is not moved from place to place. Hence, there is lesser chance for damage to the product and the cost of moving it is reduced. On the other hand, there is a significant increase in the cost of moving equipment to and from the work area, so the utilization of equipment is low. Once the equipment is brought to the work site, it must remain there until the entire job is done. For instance, we often see bulky road-repair equipment sitting idle at a construction site. Although the equipment is used intermittently only for a few days, it must be kept at the work site until the entire road-repair job is completed. A fixed-position layout is shown in Figure 7.8.
Focused Factories and Group Technology
Published in John Nicholas, Lean Production for Competitive Advantage, 2018
In a fixed-position layout, the end item remains in a stationary position while it is being produced. Fixed-position layouts are common in project work where the end item is large and difficult to move (e.g., big ships, hydroelectric turbines, electrical transformers, some kinds of aircraft), and in job work where items are custom-produced by craftspeople (custom cars and machine tools). This kind of layout was used by Henry Ford and other early mass producers. At Ford, each car was assembled at one location: Materials were brought to it and workers walked around it to perform tasks.
Facility Layout
Published in Susmita Bandyopadhyay, Production and Operations Analysis, 2019
In fixed position layout, the major components and major materials are placed in a fixed position and the other required machinery, labor, and materials are brought to the fixed location for processing. This type of layout is applicable for the manufacturing of very large and heavy products, like ship building. The assembly of this type of product requires heavy parts and the transportation costs to bring those parts are significantly high.
Consideration of processing time dissimilarity in batch-cyclic scheduling of flowshop cells
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2021
Najat Almasarwah, Gürsel A. Süer
Manufacturing systems are divided into four types of layouts as Product Layout, Process Layout, Cellular Layout, and Fixed Layout based on production volume and product variety. Figure 1 presents the types of manufacturing system layouts. Dissimilar machines are brought together into a production line in the product layout, and each production line meets the high-volume demand -for a product. In the process layout, similar machines are grouped into different departments. The products move from one department to another before the final product is completed. In the cellular layout, similar products are grouped into a product family based on their processing similarity where each cell has dissimilar machines required to run the product family. In a fixed layout, the product remains in a fixed position, and machines and workers move around the product (Askin and Standridge 1993; Süer, Huang, and Maddisetty 2010).