[Iefac.list] Offer of Assistance for Student Projects on Facilities Planning Involving Hundreds of Routings

[Shahrukh A. Irani]

Colleagues:

 

Do any of your students (co-ops, interns, undergrads/grads doing their
capstone projects, grads doing their theses, etc.) need assistance with
facilities planning projects that involve analysis of a large number of
routings (<= 500 please)?  Easy examples of projects where this type of
analysis would surely help are document flows in offices or patient flows in
a hospital or multi-product flow networks in just about any non-assembly
manufacturing facility (machine shop, forge shop, sheet metal shop, etc.).
All that they need to do is send us an Excel file (PFAST requires just 3
spreadsheets - parts list, workcenter list and routings) and we would
provide them the complete PFAST Analysis Report in Excel format.
Thereafter, they could post-process those results further with powerful
layout software tools like LAYOPT, PLANOPT and SPIRAL.  A typical PFAST
Analysis Report contains the following outputs:

.         Sample segmentation (P-Q Analysis and P-Q-$ Analysis), 

.         From-To Charts (Q and $), 

.         Part family formation (both matrix and dendogram versions aligned
on a common permutation of parts), 

.         Common substrings of operations detected in multiple routings
(this analysis may be used to implement modular layouts instead of pure
cells, but it could also be replaced by a cluster analysis of a normalized
symmetric From-To Chart),

.         Global alignment of routings (for design of hybrid flowshop
layouts, a layout that is intermediate between the classical Functional
Layout and the classical Cellular Layout, and unlike the pure flowshop,
allows different machine types at each stage with machine duplication to
eliminate backtracking between non-adjacent stages).  If you are familiar
with Swim Lane Diagrams and the Multi-Product Process Chart, this output
makes up for the drawbacks of those two classical representations of a large
sample of routings.

Besides design of a range of facility layouts for high-mix low-volume
environments, by "fooling" PFAST via the input file, we have used its
outputs for parts-tools matrix clustering to design multi-use storage racks,
workplace design for high-variety assembly and value stream mapping for a
large fabricated product like a plane or weighing scale or furnace.

 

I would welcome a chance to compare cross-pollinate our courses on
Facilities Planning by exploring how to link PFAST to your favorite layout
design software tools. 

 

Thank you.

 

Shahrukh

 

======================================

Shahrukh A. Irani

Associate Professor

Department of Integrated Systems Engineering

The Ohio State University

294 Baker Systems Engineering

1971 Neil Avenue

Columbus, OH 43210

Phone: (614) 688-4685 Fax: (614) 292-7852

URL: http://ise.osu.edu/biosketch_SIrani.cfm 

 

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