Optimal design of facility layout for manufacturing system

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Southland Trailer is a truck trailer manufacturer based in Lethbridge, AB. The company fabricates their entireproducts in-house. The current facility layout of the fabrication plant is non-optimal. It has been graduallyexpended over the past 20+ years, which, unfortunately, results in some legacy issues. The non-optimal facilitylayout is one of the most notorious. The current facility layout incurs non-value-adding material movements,which leads to low efficiency and productivity. An estimate of extra 4030 labor hours are spent annually onmoving materials and work in process (WIP) trailers through the facility due to the inefficiency of the currentfacility layout. It costs the company more than $250,000 yearly, the money of which could have been betterspent in value-adding business activities. In order to address this issue, Southland Trailer plans to build a newplant with the optimal plant layout within 2-3 years. The company intends to gain expertise in designingoptimal facility layout through this research project. Moreover, Southland Trailer also wants to explore otherpossible directions for collaborations, including looking for a new material to be used for the walls of theirenclosed cargo trailers, analyzing production flow and looking for possible improvement, and designing a newsuspension system.