Horti-Business Management (2+0)

Steps in planning the physical facilities

• Planning the physical facilities require the following steps.
1) Good selection and arrangement of physical facilities can pay dividends
2) Determine the goods and services to be produced and performed

• Break the product or services into parts, operations and activities. Parts are the divisions of the product that, when assembled form output. Some outputs have only one part while others may have many. Operations are the steps or segments of work performed to accomplish the conversion of inputs into outputs. Activities such as moving raw materials are necessary for the performance of operations. Non-activities including delays are caused by imbalance of times of the operation. Activities and non- activities may not be identified fully until the final lay out planning is done. The number and extent of non-activities should be minimized.
3) Determine the time to perform operations

• Each operation required to produce a good or perform service consumes the time of work of machines and personnel. The total time includes the time to perform the operation plus time for unavoidable delays and personnel needs. The time of work determines the number of machines and the number of people needed to perform the work and speed of conveyors.
4) Estimate the number of machines and workers needed

• Knowing the time that a machine takes to perform an operation on a product, and knowing the planned production, the number of machines needed can be determined.
5) Decide the best arrangement for the sequence of operations

• The operations management has to ensure the least movement of product and people. However, people and machines should not be idle and space available should not be wasted. The plant can be planned according to either or a combination of both of the following two types of layout.
a) Product or Service layout
b) Processor or Function layout

a) The product layout places machines or serving units in such a way that the product moves along a line as it passes through the sequence of operations. Materials and people move forward from operation to operation with little back tracking .
Advantages

1. Specialization of workers an machines
2. Less inventory
3. Fewer instructions and control
4. Faster movement
5. Less space for storage
b) The process layout is based on keeping machines and workers busy thus idle time is reduced to a minimum. Machines performing the same type of work and workers with similar skill are grouped together.