DEVELOPMENT OF A FLEXIBLE PLANT LAYOUT SYSTEM FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE INDUSTRIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Facilities are increasing in industrial environment everyday as a result of change in technology which leads to further expansion. Facility layout must be flexible to cater for these changes. This research proposes the development of a flexible plant layout system to minimize facility arrangement cost, demolition of existing facilities and gives room for future expansion, using developed software. In this study, flexible plant layout system was developed for small and medium scale industries in Nigeria to take care of future addition of new facilities. The approach involves identifying and solving plant layout problems (especially future expansion problems) thereby generating an ideal layout through the use of flexible plant layout which was developed using the Visual Basic programming language. Fish feed mills production factory plant in Akure, Nigeria was used as a case study in the research. It was discovered that the flexible plant layout software developed (FLEXPLAYS) could be used to generate alternative layout which are more effective as it gives room for future expansion. The modified plant layout structure needs no re-arrangement for the basis of flexibility. The results derived from the application of FLEXPLAYS showed that the existing layout was difficult in the area of flexibility by 75% based on the flow of equipment