Lay-out optimisation through an integrated approach based on material flow and operations mapping using a commercial software

The overall performance of an industrial firm is significantly affected by the design of its manufacturing facility. Factory design and plant optimisation are increasingly complex and capital-intensive. That is why factory design projects require a great deal of modelling, analysis, and program management to ensure acceptable system performance after implementation. From this point of view the material handling plays a crucial role in flexible manufacturing systems. Given the complexity of material handling system, the aim of this paper is to investigate the challenges of the development and deployment of a multi objective approach in order to provide the company with a layout that is able to optimise the available space, speed up the transfer of material between the various units of the plant and ensure a continuous flow and the closeness between units where there is an important relationship. The final goal of the optimisation is to find a production schedule that satisfies different, contradictory production and business constraints. Definitively, the main objective of the paper is to apply multi-disciplinary approach, tools and techniques to propose an innovative theoretical methodological approach. To illustrate the efficiency and applicability of the proposed method, it is also applied into a real case in a parts manufacturing company in Italy.