Abstract:
In today‟s competitive world where trade barriers are diminishing, manufacturing enterprises find themself competing business rivals from every corner of the globe. In order to compete and be on top in their respective discipline, companies must make use of their resources effectively and efficiently to become more productive. Without effective and efficient use of its resources, a company cannot survive in today‟s competitive business environment [1].It is argued that Productivity is exceptionally important to a company‟s ability to compete and grow over time and represents the most important variable for governing production [2].
Researchers have made a lot of efforts to increase manufacturing productivity and developed several management techniques such as, total quality management (TQM), Statistical Process Control (SPC), Supply Chain Management (SCM), lean manufacturing, Just-In-Time (JIT), Quality Control (QC), kaizen and kanban etc
Jubin James, et al., 2013 [3] argued that before using aforementioned management tools for productivity improvement, the basic facility layout should be analyzed and optimized. These techniques will be more beneficial if plant layout will be correct. Facilities Layout have direct effect on the production rate and to be successful in today‟s competitive manufacturing environment, every industry have to look for new approaches to facilities planning [4, 5].
In this study, a Productivity Improvement Model is developed for manufacturing enterprises (MEs). This is done by studying different factors associated with productivity improvement in manufacturing enterprises specially facility layout planning. The Productivity Improvement Model is developed to improve deficiencies in existing literature regarding the integrated use of Simulation Modeling and automated use of Systematic Layout Planning (SLP), a time tested facility layout planning technique. A procedure is developed to implement the Productivity Improvement Model for real case enterprises.
