Improving Plant Efficiency using Optimization Techniques in a Large Scale Foundry Industry

Facility layout design is a strategic issue and has a significant and lasting impact on the efficiency of a manufacturing system. An ideal facility layout provides the optimum relationship among output floor area and manufacturing process. Facility layout facilitates production process, minimizes material handling time and costs, and allows flexibility of operations makes optimum use of the building, promotes effective utilization of manpower Traditionally, the facility layout problem is solved using many methods like heuristics, mathematical programming, knowledge based approaches etc. This paper presents a case study for improvement in layout in a casting company. The first visit to the company revealed a variety of problems due to its improper layout. For modifying the present layout of the plant Group technology is used. This work studies the impact of implementing the modified layout based on Group Technology theory in a casting factory in terms of cost and production line efficiency.