A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Engineering. School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1994

Facility layout problems can occur in a large number of ways and have significant effects on the overall effectiveness of the production system in terms of cost reduction which result in maximum profit. In this research, the possible improvement of the plant layout without re construction cost and design for the new plant to meet the higher capacity requirement will be emphasized. To improve the layout, there is definitely a basic need to rearrange the manufacturing activities in a sequence of continuous flow process in order to minimize material handling cost or material movement cost. The FACTORY program is used to analyze this problem because it is easy to create, to modify, to retrieve and to display drawing as well as to evaluate the cost. In the case of plant design, it is necessary to decide about the space requirements for the layout. One of the determinants of the space requirement is the production rate. The CAN-Q program is used to help in indicating the number of machi~es that meet the capacity requirement. Then, the new plant can be created with different flow patterns by FACTORY program. This study concentrates on the problem of facility layout of LITE-ON Industry (Thailand). Decisions on the optimal plant layout depend on material handling cost.