Consider a manufacturing factory, which has a warehouse, a production facility, and a quality control department. There are three different receiving bays that are utilized for checking in raw materials into the warehouse. So, the goods are brought off the truck, checked into the computer systems, and then they are moved into a quarantine area. The goods reside in the quarantine area until the Quality Control Department provides authorization for those goods to be placed in stock. When the authorization is obtained, the goods are moved over to the Raw Material Storage area and they stay there until the Production Department releases a work order that needs these raw materials. After a work order documentation is generated, a work order picklist will be provided to Warehouse personnel so that the needed raw materials are moved to the Production Staging Area, where the raw materials will be prepared for that day's production. Prepared raw materials are transferred into the Production Area where various production routines are acted upon these raw materials. The output of the production processes, i.e., finished goods, is moved over to another quarantine area in which the Quality Control Department performs necessary tests on those finished goods. When the quality control approval is provided, Warehouse personnel will transfer these goods to the Finished Goods Storage area. Finished goods will reside in this area until the Company places a sales order requiring those goods. At this point, the finished goods are allocated to the sales order and a picking ticket is generated from the Warehouse management system. This picking ticket instructs the Warehouse personnel to move finished goods from the Finished Goods Storage area to the Staging Area for Picked Inventory. Goods reside in this staging area until the personnel from the Packing Station Area are ready to put those goods into boxes with appropriate labeling. After packaging is done, they are transferred into the Shipping Staging Area where they will be picked up by trucks for transportation.
Draw a facility layout for this manufacturing factory showing the placement of the relevant departments and the placement of areas to execute the operations described above. Please explain your reasoning for the layout. (Hint: You can start listing all the operations necessary in this production facility. You can then draw a Flow Process Chart. These two tools will help you to develop the layout for the facility.)
