Improvement of Industrial Production Process Design Using Systematic Layout Planning

Modern industrial production processes, including also shipbuilding processes, are expected to deliver products or interim products on time with acceptable price and required quality. For instance, production of pipe units in shipbuilding industry that use conventional methods, characterized by high content of human work per pipe unit, cannot satisfy these requirements. To increase productivity it is necessary to introduce CNC machines and robotized lines that will also enhance production process capacity. Accordingly, optimal machines layout to ensure production and technological process with maximal capacity potential should be defined, Therefore, for production process design improvement, the employment of Systematic layout planning proceure is proposed. SLP procedure is used for defining optimal machines and jobs layout within the production process. Improvement of production process design using proposed procedure has been tested through basic design for new pipe production workshop within a particular shipyard.