See

discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215594744

The Effect of Layout Design on Productivity: An

Empirical Study

Article in International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management · June 2011

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2011.040545

CITATIONS READS

3 4,548

4 authors, including:

Zahid A Khan Arshad Noor Siddiquee

Jamia Millia Islamia Jamia Millia Islamia
168 PUBLICATIONS 886 CITATIONS 128 PUBLICATIONS 462 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Surface Modifications through FSP View project

Friction stir welding of dissimilar aluminium alloys View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Arshad Noor Siddiquee on 04 June 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

484 Int. J. Productivity and Quality Management, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2011

The effect of layout design on productivity:

an empirical study

Shahrul Kamaruddin* and Sok Yee Khoo

School of Mechanical Engineering,
Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Engineering Campus,
Nibong Tebal 14300, Penang, Malaysia
Fax: +604 5941025
E-mail: meshah@eng.usm.my
E-mail: khoosokyee@gmail.com
*Corresponding author

Zahid A. Khan and Arshad Noor Siddiquee

Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Jamia Millia Islamia, Central University,
Jamia Nagar, New Delhi 110025, India
Fax: +91 11 26981259
E-mail: zahid_jmi@yahoo.com
E-mail: arshadnsiddiqui@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study that uses simulation to

investigate the performance of different layout designs with respect to different
levels of model and head count variability. There are three types of layout
designs being examined in this paper: flow line, job shop and cellular
layout. These three layouts are evaluated based on three selected performance
measures which are throughput time, lateness and labour productivity. These
three performance measures are selected because they relate with the overall
layout productivity. The simulation model is build by using the WITNESS
simulation package and the simulation results are tested in the F-test and
Newman-Keuls test. In this study, the radio-cassette player production system
has been used as an empirical study. The results show that the effect of
headcount variability and model variability do create an impact towards the
performance of flow line, job shop and cellular layout.

Keywords: layout design; flow line; job shop; cellular layout; simulation;
productivity; empirical study.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kamaruddin, S.,

Khoo, S.Y., Khan, Z.A. and Siddiquee, A.N. (2011) ‘The effect of layout
design on productivity: an empirical study’, Int. J. Productivity and Quality
Management, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.484–500.

Biographical notes: Shahrul Kamaruddin received the BEng (Hons) degree

from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland in 1996, the MSc
degree from the University of Birmingham, UK, in 1998 and the PhD from the
University of Birmingham in 2003. Currently, he is an Associate Professor with

Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 The effect of layout design on productivity 485

the School Mechanical Engineering (under the manufacturing engineering

with management programme), Universiti Sains Malaysia. He has various past
experiences with manufacturing industries from heavy to electronics industries,
especially in the field of industrial engineering, manufacturing processes and
product design. He has more than 20 publications in reputed international
and national journals/conferences. His current research interests include
simulation and modelling of manufacturing systems, production planning and
control, maintenance management and application of artificial intelligence
techniques in manufacturing.

Sok Yee Khoo received the Bachelors Degree in Manufacturing Engineering

from Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Zahid A. Khan received the BSc in Mechanical Engineering and the MSc in
Industrial and Production Engineering from Aligarh Muslim University,
Aligarh, India, in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and the PhD degree from Jamia
Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, in 2001 in Mechanical
Engineering. He is associated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi,
India, since 1990. His current research interests include design and process
optimisation, application of soft computing techniques, study of the effects of
environmental parameters such as noise, vibration, illumination, etc. on
humans. He is on the panel of reviewers for Biosystems Engineering.

Arshad Noor Siddiquee is an Associate Professor in Production Engineering at

Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, India. His major research interest includes
welding engineering, machining and optimisation of design and process
parameters using the fuzzy modelling. He received his MTech from Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi (India) and currently pursuing Doctoral
Research in the area of Welding from IIT, Delhi.

1 Introduction

A manufacturing system consists of workstations or departments, as well as resources

like personnel, material and machinery which must be arranged to form a well-ordered
system to maximise benefits. However, it is not an easy task to design best possible
layout in order to achieve the desired goal of productivity and profitability, while at the
same time ensure safety and satisfaction of workers (Gonzalez-Cruz and Gomez-Senent
Matinez, 2010). Ramkumar et al. (2009) discussed the latest scenario in layout design,
where manufacturing companies spend a significant amount of resources like time and
money for designing and redesigning their facilities. This is because the design of a
facility layout has a tremendous effect on the operation of the system and production that
it houses. An effective facility layout can actually reduce from 10% to 30% of total
operating expenses in manufacturing, annually (Singh and Sharma, 2006).
Layout design is basically the arrangement of machines or workstations at production
floor to provide smooth movement of resources such as raw materials and workers. An
effective layout design is important for good manufacturing of products or delivery of
services (Drira et al., 2007). As stated in Hassan (1995), the layout of manufacturing
facilities used to be classified as job shop, flow shop and fixed layout. However, the
486 S. Kamaruddin et al.

emergence of group technology (GT) has added a new type of layout classification
named as cellular layout.
In an assembly-based industry, different types of layouts have been used, such as
flow line, job shop and cellular layout. On the other hand, most of the manufacturing
companies have faced the problem of inflexibility in their production system that
subsequently made them unable to fulfil the customer requirements. Therefore, there is a
need to investigate the capability of each layout type to adapt with the changes of
headcount and number of models. In the present work, layout types that are being
investigated are: flow line, job shop and cellular layout.
Flow line is a layout that designs according to the sequences of process that need to
be performed in order to produce a product. Usually, in a flow line, all jobs are processed
by the same set of machines in linear fashion, from the first to last stage and one machine
performs all the processing for each stage (Kurz and Askin, 2003). Therefore, each
product type will have its own line and it is usually designed to produce a large number
of outputs. The major concern in designing a flow line is to evenly distribute the total
work of the line into relating workstations so that the bottleneck can be eliminated to
improve the layout efficiency. Apart from that, optimal workers’ distribution plan is also
important for the increased flow-line throughput and managed workload (Neubert and
Savino, 2009). The latest researches on flow-line layout show the usage of simulated
annealing-based approach (Arumugam et al., 2007; Laha and Chakraborty, 2010)
and genetic algorithm (Besbes et al., 2010) in optimising the layout.
Job shop design on the other hand groups similar activities, such as processes,
functions or sub-assemblies into a shop. According to Tay and Ho (2008), this layout
design is suitable when there are a wide variety of products but have low production
volume. The flexibility of this layout is highest among the three layouts, where different
types of products can be produced. However, the job shop is usually inefficient due to
higher work in process (WIP) and backtracking.
Cellular layout tries to combine the advantages of flow line and job shop. The cellular
layout comes from the application of GT whose main idea is to identify and group
machines with same contribution in production process (Mahdavi and Mahadevan, 2008).
In designing a cellular layout, different machines or workstations to produce products
with similar shape or processing sequences will be grouped into a cell. The worker
utilisation of cellular layout can be increased because one worker can be assigned to more
than one workstation. Therefore, the worker in a cellular layout should be capable in
handling different kinds of machines or tasks. Cellular layout is also recognised as an
efficient and effective way to improve productivity in a company by minimising material
handling cost and minimising load unbalance in production (Hachicha et al., 2008).
Based on these three types of layout, an empirical study is conducted in a radio–
cassette player production system. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of
model variability and headcount variability towards the flow line, job shop and cellular
layout for a radio–cassette player manufacturing process and select a feasible layout from
it. The layouts are simulated and tested using WITNESS software.

2 Literature review

Layout design is basically the physical arrangement of elements such as workstations or

machines in a manufacturing system. The aim of layout design is to provide smooth flow
 The effect of layout design on productivity 487

of workers, materials and information through the system. In order to meet this aim,
layout design is considered as an important issue in designing any manufacturing system
because it involves large amount of investment and any misjudgement at this stage will
lead to losses to the company. El-Baz (2004) has stated the importance of facility layout
design towards the productivity by saying an effective facility layout design reduces
manufacturing lead time, increases the throughput and hence increases overall
productivity and efficiency of the plant.
Pugazhendhi et al. (2002) have defined flow line, where all jobs require processing on
all machines and jobs have unidirectional flow with identical flow pattern. They also
define the difference between pure flow line and general flow line. A pure flow line is
characterised by the situation, where all the jobs are required to be processed on all
machines; whereas general flow line is a case, where some or all jobs have missing
operations on some machines; however, the sequence of machine visits is the same and is
unidirectional for all jobs.
Job shop on the other hand is characterised by a wide variety of products with
variable routings and processing times. It is also called as functional layout with universal
equipment, where production can take place as per customers’ specification in small
batches. There are two dynamic circumstances that have to be considered; external
dynamics related to rush orders, product mix, volumes demanded, etc., and internal
dynamics related to machine breakdowns, production rates, operator absenteeism, quality
problems and production yields.
Land and Gaalman (1996) and Corsten and Gössinger (2004) have defined job shop
as a special organisational form of production, where machines carrying out identical or
similar operations are combined into one shop. A job shop is always preferred due to the
large number of different product types that it can adapt. Production includes relatively
small quantities combined with different working cycles and displays relatively strong
fluctuation over a certain period of time. These conditions are particularly prevalent in
order-driven production of single or small batches.
One of the latest researches on job shop is related to the development and analysis of
scheduling decision rules for dynamic flexible job shop production system by using
simulation (Vinod and Sridharan, 2009). In the experiment conducted, it was found that
some operation performance works efficiently on a primary machines but less efficient on
other machine. This is modelled as a percentage increase in the processing time when an
operation is performed on an alternate machine. The operations are measured based on
mean flow time, standard deviation of flow time, mean tardiness, standard deviation of
tardiness and also percentage of tardy jobs. The authors proposed six new scheduling
rules for job shop layout and the simulation results reveal that the proposed scheduling
rules provide better overall performance for various measures when compared with the
existing rules.
Many manufacturers have introduced modern manufacturing concepts in their
manufacturing systems in order to meet customers’ requirements which fluctuate with
time. One of the concepts that is said to have the capability in improving the productivity,
quality and reduction in production cost is cellular layout. According to Drolet et al.
(1996), cellular manufacturing (CM) is the result of the application of the so-called GT
cell, a concept developed by a Russian named Mitrofanow in the 1940s. On the other
hand, Molleman et al. (2002) defined cellular layout as the grouping of workers and
machines into relatively independent cells, which are responsible for the complete
manufacturing of a set of part types.
488 S. Kamaruddin et al.

On the other hand, Hassan (1995) has reviewed the development of the cellular
manufacturing (CM), and furthermore developed a framework in developing the GT
layout. In his review, he had mentioned three major steps in developing GT layout, which
are formed from part families and machine cells; arrangement of the machines or
workstations within each cell and determining the configuration of cells on the facility
layout. However, the cellular layout problem is more concerned with the process of
determining the best arrangement of machines or workstation within each cell. There are
three common ways in workstation arrangements which are single row (flow line),
multirows (job shop) and loop layout.
The objectives in determining the best arrangement are the minimisation of
movement cost and backtracking while maximising the throughput. Furthermore, there
are nine steps suggested by Hassan (1995) in his framework for developing the cellular
layout. The steps begin with preparing preliminary data, determining the suitability of GT
manufacturing, dealing with layout flexibility, identifying significant factors, formation
of part families and machines cells, preparing layout data, developing cell layout,
developing cell system layout and examining the location of bottleneck machines.
Panchalavarapu and Chankong (2005) highlighted the issue of cell formation, which
is concerned with identifying part families and machine cells. They noted that cell
formation that ignores the integration between part similarities and processing similarities
has lead to complex material flow in the system. Therefore, they redefined the cell
formation as identifying machine cells, part families and a combination of sub-assemblies
so that once the part families are completely processed within a cell they are also
assembled within the cell. Subsequently, they proposed a mathematical model to
determine assignment of parts, machines and sub-assemblies to manufacturing cells.
The mathematical model is based on the similarities of parts, machines and sub-
assembly, which can be computed from part–machine incident matrix and part–
sub-assembly incident matrix. Furthermore, Panchalavarapu and Chankong (2005)
utilised a case study to analyse the production system that they designed by adopting the
assembly considerations. The evaluation of the cell design depends on varying the
numbers of cell. Comparison between cell design based on GT alone, and with assembly
considerations are carried out. Results show that the cell design, which adopted the
assembly consideration have higher efficiency and smoother material flow in the system
as compared to the cell design based on the GT alone.
Cesaní and Steudel (2005) highlighted the importance of workers’ assignment in the
CM system, because the productivity of the system is determined by the combination of
machine and labour resources. Therefore, the objective is to study labour flexibility in
CM systems, particularly in cell implementations allowing intra-cell operator’s mobility.
Thus, the impact on different allocation strategies in the cell will be investigated here.
Using a multiple exploratory case study approach, the complexity, actual deployment and
potential of labour flexibility are examined in several cells from two manufacturing
firms, using labour limited cells with intra-cell mobility.
Researchers also focus on the comparative study between different layout types.
Li (2003) has proposed to investigate the impact of set-up and processing time variability
for job shop under Kanban system. Besides set-up and processing time variability, there
are three other factors that are considered in the research, they are shop layout,
production flow patterns and the amount of set-up time reduction achievable. Therefore,
a functional layout, a cellular layout with unidirectional flow and a cellular layout with
backtracking flow are allowed to build to compare the layout performances under set-up
 The effect of layout design on productivity 489

and processing time variability. The performance measures in this research are average
WIP, average flow time and average set-up to processing time ratio.
Besides the functional layout, there are four levels of evaluation on the cellular
layout, which involves cellular layout with backtracking allowed, cellular layout with
unidirectional flow, one-piece flow and batch flow. The results show that the functional
layout is superior to a cellular layout if the set-up time variability is high. However, as the
set-up time decreases to a medium or lower level, the performance of a cellular layout
(with batch intra-cell flow) becomes comparable with the functional layout. In addition,
with a medium set-up time reduction, set-up and processing time does not have a
significant effect on the relative shop configurations, since both functional and cellular
layout performs similarly. With a large set-up time reduction, a cellular layout is more
likely to outperform a functional layout. Only low processing time variability with
medium to low set-up time variability renders a cellular layout with one-piece and
unidirectional intra-cell flow, which is superior to that with batch intra-cell flow.
Furthermore, for a cellular layout with batch intra-cell flow, adopting unidirectional part
flows or allowing backtracks does not lead to any significant performance difference for
all factor levels investigated.
Research on the impact of layout design towards the labour productivity was carried
out by Aase et al. (2004). In the research, they have made the comparative study between
straight-line assembly line and U-shape assembly line systems in affecting the labour
productivity. Result shows that labour productivity has improved significantly under
certain conditions when switching from a straight-line assembly line to a U-shape
assembly line. This is due to the workers in the U-shape assembly line, who can perform
multitasking by moving accordingly in the U-shape configuration, and subsequently
increased the percentage of manpower utilisation. However, the results also show that
there are cases where the changes of straight-line assembly line to U-shape assembly did
not result in improving the labour productivity. This phenomenon shows that precaution
steps are necessary before changing a straight-line to a U-shape assembly line for the
purpose of labour productivity improvement.
Huertas et al. (2007) conducted a comparison between U-shape and flow-through
layout in a large capacity warehouse. They estimated and evaluated the operational costs
and average picking time of alternative layout for the warehouse, which is a distribution
centre with large variety of products. In this research, an analytical model was developed
and implemented to measure the average distances between centroids of fixed positions
for commodities. The model was used to evaluate two new alternatives of layout and
operations of the warehouse. It was found that the option with the layout with docks on
long opposite sides of the warehouse, and the operation without a separate picking zone
minimises overall operational costs.
On the other hand, Farrington and Nazemetz (1999) examined the effect of system
configuration, underlying system structure, demand variation and operation time
variability on overall system performances. Three types of layouts are selected to
be investigated; they are: a cellular layout, a dedicated job shop and a pure job shop. For
the demand variation, it involved two levels of demand pattern variability that are low
demand pattern variability and high demand variability. Similarly, there are two levels of
processing time variability that is chosen in this work. The low processing time
variability had an average coefficient of variation of 0.3, while the high processing
time variability had an average coefficient of variation of 0.6. The simulation models of
each layout type were firstly constructed in SLAM II, and each of the experiments will be
490 S. Kamaruddin et al.

replicated 16 times to gain a sufficient accuracy results. The comparative study between
the layouts are focused on eight performance measures, which are average distance
moved per order, average job lateness, average time in system, average work in process,
average machine utilisation, average number of departmental interactions, mean time to
reappearance of part families at machines and average number of open orders in the
system.
The results show that the cellular layout is always superior to the job shop with
respect to distance moved per order, number of departmental interactions and mean time
to reappearance of part families at machines; the only exceptions to this being the two
cases when the dedicated job shop had equivalent or slightly superior results for the mean
time to reappearance of part families at the machines. Therefore, it can be concluded that
the cellular layout is preferred as compared to job shop in the light of most of the
performance measures. This present work is similar with Farrington and Nazemetz
(1999), but the comparative study here is between flow line, job shop and cellular layout
under different levels of headcount variability and model variability, which was not
discussed in their work. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the overall
productivity in different layout types under different models and headcount variability.

3 Methodology

To achieve the objective stated, there are three basic layout types that need to be
developed. The layout development starts with hand modelling process, where a
conceptual layout will be developed. In order to have a clearer view on how the material
flow in the layout, precedence table and precedence diagram, a conceptual layout model
was constructed. In the precedence table, each task and standard time involved in
producing the product will be listed down. Besides, the table also include the sequence of
each task.
In addition, a few assumptions have been made to simplify the layout design
problems as shown below.
1 the distance between workstations is neglected
2 the travel time between workstations is assumed to be constant
3 all the products in the layout are assumed to be in good quality condition with zero
defects
4 no buffer exists between two adjacent workstations
5 all the workers in the layout are assumed to be skilled workers.

3.1 Design of layout

Line balancing is a major concern in designing the flow-line configuration. Therefore, a
theoretical cycle time and theoretical minimum number of workstations are calculated
initially. The formula for theoretical cycle time and the theoretical minimum number of
workstation are:
total time available in a month
Theoretical cycle time (1)
desired output
 The effect of layout design on productivity 491

total processing time

Theoretical minimum number of workstations (2)
cycle time

After determining the theoretical cycle time and theoretical minimum number of
workstations, the task is assigned one at a time to the workstations until the total station
time is less than or equal to the cycle time achieved. In the mean time, no other tasks are
carried out due to time and sequence restrictions. However, this may not be applicable in
the real world and may cause station time far lower than the theoretical cycle time,
subsequently causing the workload to be unbalanced in the layout. Therefore, the station
time is allowed to exceed the theoretical cycle time, and parallel workstation can be used
to reduce the layout bottleneck. In flow line, each worker will only be assigned to one
workstation. In addition, the material flow in the flow line is designed as one-piece flow
and the travel time between workstations are assumed to be 3 sec.
On the other hand, the design of job shop starts with grouping the processing tasks
into different shops according to the process, function or sub-assemblies. After
determining the number of shop, the bottleneck of the layout is identified. In order to
reduce the bottleneck, parallel workstations can be used and subsequently increase the
layout efficiency. Here, the material flow is designed to be moved in batches of 5, and
the travel time between shops is assumed to be 10 sec. For the design of cellular layout,
it starts with group processing tasks into cell.
In this study, the cell formation is based on the concept of single row that is similar
with flow line, which in turn simplifies the intracellular flow. This concept is chosen
because it is suitable for assembly processes. In cellular layout design, one worker can be
assigned to more than one workstation. Therefore, the U-shape arrangement within cell is
chosen, because it provides easier path for movement between workstations.
Subsequently, the worker utilisation for cellular layout can also be increased. Moreover,
the issue of balanced workload also need to be taken into consideration while designing
the cellular layout to reduce the bottleneck of the layout. The example of conceptual
layout for flow line, job shop and cellular layout with 12 workers are shown in
Figures 1–3, respectively.

Figure 1 Conceptual layout for flow line (see online version for colours)
492 S. Kamaruddin et al.

Figure 2 Conceptual layout for job shop (see online version for colours)

Figure 3 Conceptual model of cellular layout (see online version for colours)

3.2 Simulation modelling

After the conceptual layouts are designed, it will be converted into simulation layout
model by using WITNESS simulation package. Simulation is an integral part of any
effective layout planning and design in order to produce more realistic layout (Aleisa and
Lin, 2005). Basically, the simulation modelling process involves coding and linking.
Coding involves creating the required elements by defining, displaying and detailing the
icon, while linking includes linking each element with rules or actions.
Each of the simulation layout models is evaluated by the verification and validation
process. In verification, the detail of each element, the link between each elements and
any programme involved in the layout is inspected to make sure that it resembles the
conceptual model that is being planned during the hand modelling stage. On the other
hand, a validation of simulation model is to determine whether the elements in the
simulation model represent the corresponding real world with sufficient accuracy.
The approach used in this work is to compare the model results with the calculation
results from the simulation run.
 The effect of layout design on productivity 493

3.3 Design of experiment

As stated earlier, the objective of this study is to investigate the effect of model
variability and headcount variability of different layout configurations on its performance
measures. Therefore, the layout performance measures are gained by running the
simulation models based on two experiments.
The first experiment is concerned with the headcount variability, where initial layout
with 12 workers is reduced to 11 workers and to 10 workers. Besides, each layout type
with each level of headcount variability will also be tested on three levels of model
variability, which are low, medium and high variety. The purpose of this experiment is to
investigate the changes in layout performance when the number of workers is reduced
to 11 workers and to 10 workers.
The second experiment is concerned with the model variability. In this experiment,
the number of workers in each layout is set at 11 workers and all three types of layout are
tested on three levels of model variability, which are low, medium and high variety.
In addition, each level of model variety is divided into three levels of treatments. For
example, in the low variety, it involved 5–7 models of changes. Therefore, this
experiment will investigate the effect of different levels of model changes to the layout
performances.
In running both experiments, there are also few assumptions being made which are as
follows:
x replication of simulation runs in each experiment is done five times
x the number of workers in all three types of layouts in each comparative study is same
x the desired volume is set at 9,000 units
x the due dates is set at 17 days
x processing time for each model types is assumed to be constant, but the set-up time
for each model is different
x the simulation layouts performed at starting condition where no WIP is in the layout.

3.4 Performance measures

Several dependent variables that can be observed from the simulation runs are selected so
that a comparison between layouts can be made. The performance measures are chosen
according to its indication, relatively to the layout productivity. The selected performance
measures are listed as follows:
x Throughput time: the throughput time is defined as the time needed to produce one
unit of product. Therefore, a lower value of throughput time will indicate better
layout productivity. The equation used to calculate the throughput time is shown in
Equation (3).
flow time(minutes)
Throughput time (3)
output(units)
494 S. Kamaruddin et al.

x Lateness: lateness is defined as the difference between the job completion time and
the due date time. If the answer is positive, it is considered as lateness and otherwise
it is the earliness. Lateness is measured to test the capability of the layout to adapt
with the desired production volume. The equation used in calculating the lateness is
shown in Equation (4).
Lateness due date time (min)  completion time (min) (4)

x Labour productivity: labour productivity is a measurement on the utilisation of

workers in certain layout. It is defined as the number of unit products being produced
by a worker per hour in this case. Therefore, labour productivity shows how
productive a worker is in a layout. The equation in calculating the labour
productivity is shown in Equation (5).
[desired output (units) u 60(min)]
Labour productivity (5)
[no. of worker u flow time (min)]

4 Results and discussion

After the simulation runs of five replications, the data of three performance measures are
obtained. The mean value of each performance measures are tabulated into Table 2,
which illustrates the simulation results from Experiment 1, while Table 3 illustrates the
simulation results from Experiment 2. In addition, the simulation results also have been
taken as an input to the F-test to determine whether the experimental factor has an effect
on the layout performances. For those cases where the F-value is slightly over the critical
F-value, Newman–Keuls test is carried out to determine which pair of comparison
treatments caused the significant impact.
The F-test in both the experiments shows that the effect of headcount variability and
model variability do cause a significant impact on the layout performance except for the
job shop at low variety in the second experiment. This phenomenon shows that the job
shop is more capable in handling the flexibility and is not easily getting affected by the
changes. In Experiment 2, there are some cases where the F-value is only slightly greater
than the critical value at 99% level of confidence. For that reason, the Newman–Keuls
test has been carried for those cases. The results of Newman–Keuls have been shown in
Table 1.
Table 1 Newman–Keuls test results in Experiment 2

Flow line Low variety 5–7 models

Job shop Medium variety 10–14 models
High variety 15–19 models
Cellular layout Low variety 5–7 models
Medium variety 15–19 models
High variety 15–17 models
15–19 models
 The effect of layout design on productivity 495

Table 2 Experiment results for Experiment 1

Throughput Labour productivity

Exp H/C variability Model variability Layout time(min/unit) Lateness(min) (unit/worker/hour)
1 10 L FL 1.1761 1405.3416 5.1014
JS 1.7015 6133.3606 3.5264
CL 1.1617 1275.2867 5.1649
M FL 1.1839 1475.5037 5.0667
JS 1.7038 6154.2449 3.5215
CL 1.1662 1315.4760 5.1451
H FL 1.1883 1515.2230 5.0490
JS 1.7071 6183.4891 3.5148
CL 1.1768 1410.8838 5.0987
11 L FL 1.0623 380.7430 5.1346
JS 1.5176 4490.2842 3.5911
CL 1.0271 64.0975 5.3105
M FL 1.0705 454.6200 5.0953
JS 1.5184 4498.0109 3.5890
CL 1.0298 88.2189 5.2967
H FL 1.0761 505.2550 5.0686
JS 1.5208 4507.5438 3.5865
CL 1.0319 106.7193 5.2861
12 L FL 1.0165 -31.7983 4.9190
JS 1.1484 1156.0749 4.3537
CL 0.9500 -630.1992 5.2633
M FL 1.0226 23.3803 4.8895

Note: FL flow line; JS job shop; CL cellular layout; L low; M medium;

H high.

From Table 3, it is observed that there are only six cases, where the Newman–Keuls test
is needed. For example, in the flow line at low variety, the layout performances are only
affected when the number of models change from 5 models to 7 models. In another
words, the changes of models from 5 models to 6 models would not cause any significant
impact on the layout performances.
496 S. Kamaruddin et al.

Table 3 Experiment results for Experiment 2

Model No. of Throughput Labour productivity

Exp variability models Layout time(min/unit) Lateness(min) (unit/worker/hour)
2 L 5 models FL 1.0625 382.6556 5.1336
JS 1.5186 4487.1889 3.5919
CL 1.0271 64.0975 5.3105
6 models FL 1.0635 391.4959 5.1289
JS 1.5188 4489.4757 3.5913
CL 1.0276 68.5029 5.3080
7 models FL 1.0646 401.8221 5.1233
JS 1.5192 4493.0432 3.5899
CL 1.0284 75.6824 5.3039
M 10 models FL 1.0705 454.6201 5.0953
JS 1.5197 4494.1219 3.5893
CL 1.0298 88.2189 5.2967
13 models FL 1.0732 478.4711 5.0827
JS 1.5201 4500.9895 3.5883
CL 1.0310 99.1049 5.2905
14 models FL 1.0749 494.3404 5.0744
JS 1.5207 4506.3867 3.5868
CL 1.0312 101.0076 5.2894
H 15 models FL 1.0761 505.2547 5.0686
JS 1.5208 4507.5438 3.5865
CL 1.0319 106.7193 5.2861
17 models FL 1.0801 541.1605 5.0499
JS 1.5215 4513.8053 3.5849
CL 1.0337 125.7047 5.2765
19 models FL 1.0825 562.8033 5.0387
JS 1.5222 4515.8453 3.5844
CL 1.0343 128.6440 5.2737
Note: FL flow line; JS job shop; CL cellular layout; L low; M medium;
H high.
From both experiments, the observation shows that at any layout type the throughput time
and lateness is increased when the numbers of models are increased. This is because
when more changes of model involved in a production system, more time has been spent
at the set-up which causes the time needed to produce a product increased. Subsequently,
the lateness will also be increased due to the value of lateness, which is proportional with
the throughput time. On the other hand, the productivity decreased when the numbers of
model changes are increased. This is caused by the frequent changes of orders that results
in spending more time on the non-productive work for the worker. Furthermore, the
throughput time and lateness have been increased when the numbers of workers are
decreased. The reason for this phenomenon is the decrement of workers in the layout has
 The effect of layout design on productivity 497

subsequently reduced the total work force in the layout. Therefore, the workload for each
worker has been increased, and the time needed to produce each product is more.
However, there is a different trend of labour productivity when the number of
workers is decreased in the layout. For the job shop, the decrement of workers has
decreased the labour productivity. This may be due to the unbalanced scenario in the
layout, where lesser number of workers in the layout will cause higher bottlenecks with
blockage. Thus, some of the workers may stay in the non-productive status or idle status
while waiting for jobs being processed at the successor station. For the flow line and
cellular layout, the labour productivity has been decreased from 12 workers to 11 workers
and increased from 11 workers to 10 workers. This phenomenon shows that the flow line
and cellular layout are better balanced design at 12 workers and 10 workers as compared
with the 11 workers’ layout. From the F-test, it shows that there is significant effect on
the selected performance measures by changing the experimental factor which is the
headcount variability and model variability. Therefore, it can be concluded that we can
measure the performance of each layout by considering the selected performance
measures.
Considering the results from Tables 2 and 3, the cellular layout was always superior
to the flow line and job shop based on the three selected performance measures. Here, the
comparative study will be discussed on each performance measure. Cellular layout has
the lowest throughput time at all levels of headcount variability and model variability.
The trend is followed by flow line and job shop configuration. Essentially, the throughput
time in each layout is affected by the even distribution of workload, travelling time
between workstations and types of material flow.
In the cellular layout, the well-balanced workload for worker that assigns one worker
to more than one workstations to increase the worker utilisation; the shorter travelling
time between workstations due to the workstations are closely arranged, and material
moves in batch has caused the time needed to produce one product to be shorter in the
cellular layout. In contrast, job shop has the highest throughput time, and this may be due
to the unbalanced scenario in the layout that caused the longer awaiting time at the
workstation when blockage occurred.
As mentioned earlier, lateness is proportional with the throughput time. This is
because the lateness in completing the available orders are affected by the time needed in
producing a product, which is the throughput time. Therefore, when the throughput time
is high, the lateness will also be high. As a result, the cellular layout has the lowest
lateness value among the three layout types.
Besides, the cellular layout with 12 workers also shows negative value at all levels of
model variability. On the other hand, the flow line with 12 workers is only capable in
finishing the orders at low variety in time, where the job shop is unable to finish the
orders at any level of headcount variability and model variability. These phenomena
show that cellular layout design in this study is capable in handling different levels of
model variability with small quantities, while flow shop is capable in producing high
volume with low model changes. Although job shop is said to be capable in handling the
flexibility, but in this case where no variable routings are involved, the advantages of job
shop has been concealed and only the inefficient job shop appeared.
With respect to the labour productivity, cellular layout has once again achieved the
highest value followed by the flow line and job shop. This is due to the U-shape of
workstations’ arrangement that has facilitated the workers to move between workstations
and allowed the worker to be assigned to more than one workstation. As a result, the
498 S. Kamaruddin et al.

workload for each worker in the cellular layout is well balanced and increases the labour
productivity.
After comparing the three performance measures for the three types of layout
configurations under different levels of headcount variability and model variability, the
cellular layout with 12 workers is selected as the feasible layout that is capable to finish
the available orders on time. Besides, cellular layout with 11 workers can be taken as
another alternative in selecting the feasible layout in producing 9,000 units of products.
This is because the cellular layout with 11 workers is only delayed by 2 hr in completing
the jobs at high variety, and this situation can be easily overcome by adding two hours of
overtime.
However, the cellular layout with 11 workers has met its limit in producing the total
volume of 9,000 units and may not be capable in handling a higher product demand,
while the cellular layout with 12 workers still has space for increment in product demand.
Therefore, it can be concluded that cellular layout is well performing as compared with
flow line and job shop. In addition, cellular layout with 12 workers and 11 workers are
two alternatives that can be chosen in order to run a production with different model
variability.
In comparison to the theoretical contributions of the empirical study, the research has
provided new insights from the managerial perspective. It has been identified that by
understanding the emerging requirements in relation to the demand, variation of model
and workers has enabled the management to deal with the challenges involving the effect
of layout design. The nature of broader view is specifically preferred in relation to the
kind of challenges faced by a company operating in a low volume and high-mix
environment. As the findings exemplify, it is not enough for the management to
concentrate on developing and improving the layout without prior understanding of the
impact towards the overall productivity. Moreover, by understanding and incorporating
various factors that have been highlighted in the findings, it can provide significance
value in unravelling the advantages of adopting various layouts in assembling various
products. This is particularly crucial in the current scenario, where the nature of the
global markets is more focus due to homogenisation of supply and demand.

5 Conclusion

The purpose of this work is to determine the effect of two experimental factors
(headcount variability and model variability) towards different types of layout design.
Eventually, there are three levels of each experiment which consists of low, medium and
high parameters. Besides, three types of performance measures, which are the simulation
results collected from the simulation runs have been chosen to provide a basis for
comparing the layout performance. These performance measures are chosen, because it
can represent the productivity of the layout indirectly. The performance measures are
throughput time, lateness and labour productivity. In order to test the experimental factor
on the layout model designed initially, two experiments have been planned. Experiment 1
intended to investigate the effect of headcount variability, while Experiment 2 was set to
investigate the model variability at constant headcount.
From the F-test, it can be concluded that the effect of headcount variability and model
variability do have an impact towards the layout performance, except for the job shop
with 11 people at low variety. Finally, the feasible layout design for radio–cassette player
 The effect of layout design on productivity 499

production system will be chosen among the three layout designs based on the
performance measures. Results show that the cellular layout with 12 people is capable in
handling high-volume and high-model variability as required in the cassette–radio player
production system and cellular layout with 11 workers is another alternative in this
empirical study, where it can achieve the desired demand by adding two hours of
overtime.
Some of the effects of dependent variables in this research are not clear due to the
levels of treatments that are considered to be too narrow. Therefore, the future work can
test the simulation layouts with levels of treatments that have larger difference. For
example, in Experiment 2, the levels of treatments for model variability can be set as 4
mix models, 8 mix models and 12 mix models in the low variety level. By doing this, the
effect of different mix models at a model variability level can be observed clearly.
Besides, the job shop simulation layouts can also be tested at products in different
routings to find out its level of flexibility in handling this kind of situation.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the reviewers of this paper for their suggestions
and recommendations in improving the manuscript and also the research grant provided
by Universiti Sains Malaysia and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOSTI) for
funding this study.

References
Aase, G.R., Olson, J.R. and Schniederjans, M.J. (2004) ‘U-shaped assembly line layouts and their
impact on labor productivity: an experimental study’, European Journal of Operational
Research, Vol. 156, pp.698–711.
Aleisa, E.E. and Lin, L. (2005) ‘For effective facilities planning: layout optimization then
simulation, or vice versa?’ Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conferences,
pp.1381–1385.
Arumugam, C., Raja, K. and Selladurai, V. (2007) ‘Agility in two-stage hybrid flow shop parallel
machine scheduling through simulated annealing’, International Journal of Services and
Operations Management, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp.332–354.
Besbes, W., Teghem, J. and Loukil, T. (2010) ‘Scheduling hybrid flow shop problem with
non-fixed availability constraints’, European Journal of Industrial Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 4,
pp.413–433.
Cesaní, V.I. and Steudel, H.J. (2005) ‘A study of labor assignment flexibility in cellular
manufacturing systems’, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp.571–591.
Corsten, H. and Gössinger, R. (2004) ‘Opportunistic coordination of operations in job shop
production’, Technovation, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp.219–234.
Drira, A., Pierreval, H. and Hajri-Gabouj, S. (2007) ‘Facility layout problems: a survey’, Annual
Reviews in Control, Vol. 13, pp.255–267.
Drolet, J., Abdulnour, G. and Rheault, M. (1996) ‘The cellular manufacturing evolution’,
Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 31, Nos. 1–2, pp.139–142.
El-Baz, M.A. (2004) ‘A genetic algorithm for facility layout problems of different manufacturing
environments’, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 47, Nos. 2–3, pp.233–246.
Farrington, P.A. and Nazemetz, J.W. (1998) ‘Evaluation of the performance domain of cellular and
functional layouts’, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp.91–101.
 500 S. Kamaruddin et al.

Gonzalez-Cruz, M.C. and Gomez-Senent Matinez, E. (2010) ‘An entropy-based algorithm to solve
the facility layout design problem’, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing,
doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2010.06.015.
Hachicha, W., Masmoudi, F. and Haddar, M. (2008) ‘Combining axiotic design and designed
experiments for cellular manufacturing systems design framework’, International Journal of
Agile Systems and Management, Vol. 3, Nos. 3/4, pp.306–319.
Hassan, M.M.D. (1995) ‘Layout design in group technology’, International Journal of Production
Economics, Vol. 38, Nos. 2–3, pp.173–188.
Huertas, J.I., Ramirez, J.D. and Salazar, F.T. (2007) ‘Layout evaluation of large capacity
warehouse’, Facilities, Vol. 25, Nos. 7/8, pp.259–270.
Kurz, M.E. and Askin, R.G. (2003) ‘Comparing scheduling rules for flexible flow lines’,
International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 85, pp.371–388.
Land, M. and Gaalman, G. (1996) ‘Workload control concepts in job shops A critical assessment’,
International Journal of Production Economic, Vols. 46–47, pp.535–548.
Laha, M. and Chakraborty, U.K. (2010) ‘Minimising total flow time in flow shop scheduling using
a simulated annealing-based approach’, International Journal of Automation and Control,
Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.359–379.
Li, J.W. (2003) ‘Improving the performance of job shop manufacturing with demand-pull
production control by reducing set-up/processing time variability’, International Journal of
Production Economic, Vol. 84, No. 3, pp.255–270.
Mahdavi, I. and Mahadevan, B. (2008) ‘CLASS: an algorithm for cellular manufacturing system
and layout design using sequence data’, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing,
Vol. 24, pp.488–497.
Molleman, E., Slomp, J. and Rofeles, S. (2002) ‘The evolution of a cellular manufacturing system –
a longitudinal case study’, Int. J. Production Economics, Vol. 75, pp.305–322.
Neubert, G. and Savino, M.M. (2009) ‘Flow shop operator scheduling trough constraint satisfaction
and constraint optimisation techniques’, International Journal of Productivity and Quality
Management, Vol. 4, Nos. 5/6, pp.549–568.
Panchalavarapu, P.R. and Chankong, V. (2005) ‘Design of cellular manufacturing systems with
assembly considerations’, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp.449–469.
Pugazhendhi, S., Thiagarajan, S., Rajendran, C. and Anantharaman, N. (2002) ‘Performance
enhancement by using non-permutation schedules in flowline-based manufacturing systems’,
Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp.133–157.
Ramkumar, A.S., Ponnambalam, S.G. and Jawahar, N. (2009) ‘A new iterated fact local research
heuristic for solving QAP formulation in facility layout design’, Robotics and Computer-
Integrated Manufacturing, Vol. 25, pp.620–629.
Singh, S.P. and Sharma, R.R.K. (2006) ‘A review of different approaches to the facility layout
problems’, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 30,
pp.25–433.
Tay, J.C. and Ho, N.B. (2008) ‘Evolving dispatching rules using genetic programming for solving
multi-objective flexible job-shop problems’, Computer and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 54,
pp.453–473.
Vinod, V. and Sridharan, R. (2009) ‘Development and analysis of scheduling decision rules for a
dynamic flexible job shop production system: a simulation study’, International Journal of
Business Performance Measurement, Vol. 11, Nos. 1/2, pp.43–71.

View publication stats