Management 14th Edition by Leslie Rue,Lloyd Byars ,Nabil Ibrahim

Exercise 23

A New Building for Tot-Two
The Tot-Two Company manufactures clothes for children up to age five. Tot-Two has been growing rapidly for the past several years and is planning to build a new plant in a recently developed industrial park on the north side of town. Shirley Shaver, the plant's operations manager, has been assigned the task of drawing up a new physical layout subject to the constraints that the new building cannot exceed 7,000 square feet, including office space, and that it must be a perfect rectangle to minimize construction costs. Shirley developed the following list of departments with their respective approximate space requirements:
Shipping (400 square feet)-area for shipping all finished goods.
Receiving (400 square feet)-area for receiving all materials and supplies.
Materials supply room (300 square feet)-storage area for all incoming materials.
Spreading and cutting area (1,600 square feet)-area containing three 40-foot tables for spreading and then cutting the cloth. Many layers of cloth are spread on top of each other and cut at the same time with large portable cutters.
Pattern-making area (200 square feet)-area in which patterns are made.
Assembly area (1,200 square feet)-area for sewing the various clothing parts.
Packing area (400 square feet)-area for packing the finished goods into boxes for shipping.
Finished goods storage (500 square feet)-area for storing finished goods before shipping.
Design area (200 square feet)-area occupied by designers.
Office space (800 square feet)-space for secretaries and company officers.
Wash facilities (300 square feet)-area containing men's and women's bathrooms.
Lunch/break area (400 square feet)-area with vending machines and lunch tables.
Shirley then drew up an initial layout as illustrated below.

Questions
1. What are the strong points of Shirley's layout? What are the weak points?
2. Redesign the layout, based on your answers to question 1.