Facilities

Is your facility laid out for the most effective movement of people, parts, and material? IES specialists can help you evaluate your manufacturing or office environment to obtain the most effective layout. A better layout will improve safety, delivery, space utilization, efficiency and quality. Small improvements in facility layout can produce big savings -- and, therefore, increased profit.

IES facility layout services will support your design activity with an integrated approach, taking quantitative and qualitative criteria into account. Your new, optimized layout will incorporate ergonomics, safety and lean engineering principles, reduce operating expenses, and help your company's competitive advantage.

Areas of focus include:
Plant
Office
Workstation
Cell
Material handling

This service may:
Create AutoCAD layouts of your existing facility
Propose improvements to your facility's current layout
Create AutoCAD layouts of improved future facility arrangements
Analyze details such as input/output access, material storage, people and workflow paths
Generate space utilization spreadsheets to improve space usage efficiency of present and future layouts
Conduct a material flow analysis to optimize travel distances and material flow-link intensities
Consider safety and ergonomic factors related to facility layout, such as adequate access, trips/falls, confined space, forklifts, material handling, storage, walking and working surfaces, means of egress, etc.

This analysis may include the one of the following or a combination of options.
Kaizen: Collective approach - The focus group consists of people working directly in the area as well as any other high interaction group. Student-on-Demand is an additional resource.

Industrial Engineer: Our staff engineers develop a plan based on the fundamental principles of layout design. Student-on-Demand is an additional resource.

Senior Project: NCSU senior students design the layout as part of their coursework requirement. Throughout a semester, the course professor and staff industrial engineer guide the students.