Layout Redesign of a Shipbuilding and Repair Plant

A one-year case study has been conducted in an offshore and onshore facilities building as well as ship building and repair plant. The main objectives of the study are to identify and analyze ineffective and unsystematic motions that occurred during the material transportation, develop and select an improved layout to minimize the material transportation distance and validate the proposed layouts using WITNESS simulation software. The approaches used are including MULTI-Floor Plant Layout Evaluation (MULTIPLE), Graph-based Method (GBM), Group technology and WITNESS simulation software. The results of the study show that layouts generated using MULTIPLE and GBM can reduce the total material transportation distance by 54.03% and 52.07% respectively. The reduction in average work in progress (AWIP) for MULTIPLE and GBM layouts are 8.81% and 8.70% respectively. In conclusion, the layout generated using MULTIPLE approach is selected as the best alternative since this alternative has eliminated ineffective and unsystematic motions in the current layout and provided greater reduction in total material transportation distance and AWIP as compared to the current layout and the layout generated using GBM.