FACTORY-FLOW TUTORIAL

This tutorial is designed to introduce the features of FactoryFLOW. In this tutorial you will analyze and determine material handling cost for an existing manufacturing facility layout. The layout consists of NSS Company’s ladder manufacturing facility.

About NSS Ladders:

NSS Ladders manufacture 250,000 aluminum ladders per year. Each ladder consists of three steps, two rails, and twelve screws. The three parts are received by NSS, modified, assembled, packed, and shipped to distribution centers worldwide. The basic layout of the manufacturing facility is shown below.

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STEP 1: Load the File and Start FactoryFLOW

· Load the NSS drawing into AutoCAD. Once it is loaded, select FactoryFLOW from the Factory menu to load FactoryFlow. Note: If this it the first time you have used FactoryFLOW the Set Factory Drawing Parameters dialog appears. Click OK to accept the default settings.

· When the Data Files dialog appears, there will be files automatically specified for Products, Parts, and Mhand. These are the files where your data will be entered. Click Cancel to finish loading FactoryFLOW.

STEP 2: Product, Parts Routing, and Material Handling Equipment Information

· Select FactoryFLOW Editor (FFEDIT) from the FFData menu.

· To accept the default file names Click OK. In the next window, since the product file does not exist yet, Click OK to create the file.· In the Product file window, enter the product name-LADDER, #/year-250000, and path color-6 (there are 225 colors available, but we have chosen magenta). Be sure to hit return after each entry to properly enter the information. Since NSS only produces one product, you have finished entering the product data. Click Save to save your data.· Now, to enter the product’s part routings information, highlight the LADDER data line and Click on the Parts button. Once again click OK to create a new file and enter the parts routing information given below into the designated slots. Before entering the data, click on the box labeled V to turn off the verification. (this can be used to ensure consistent spelling when editing existing parts files)

**As you enter the data, FactoryFLOW will automatically give you information for your next step. If you don’t need that step, edit it and continue.

PART NAME QTY FROM TO MH DEV UNIT LOAD

SCREW 12 RECEIVING ASSEMBLY HANDT 1000RAIL 2 RECEIVING RAILS FORK 50

RAIL 2 RAILS ASSEMBLY FORK 50STEP 3 RECEIVING STEPS FORK 65STEP 3 STEPS ASSEMBLY FORK 65LADDER 3 ASSEMBLY PACKING CONV1 1LADDER 1 PACKING SHIPPING FORK 25

** Be sure to save your data once the information is entered.

· Next, to enter the Material Handling information, click on the Mhand button and click OK to start a new mhe file. Then, pull down the Undef. Mat menu and double-click on CONV1 to copy that device name to the data entry field. Enter the CONV1 information from the chart below into the appropriate slots. Once you have entered

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the type number, hit return and FactoryFLOW will give you the default infromation for the type entered. You may need to change some of the default settings to match the information below. Continue this process to until you have entered the information for each of the material handling equipment.

Note: The material handling type can be selected from the menu above the type column.

Material Handling

Type Quantity Investment Cost/year

Hourly Fuel, Power & Maint.

Cost

Hourly Labor Cost

Available Minutes/Year

Load & Unload (min)

Average Speed (ft/min)

Effect (%)

CONV1 10 ******* 1000 1.00 0.00 115200 ******** ******** *******FORK 6 2 3500 1.00 15.00 115200 1.00 250.00 70

HANDT 2 1 100 0.00 10.00 115200 1.00 50.00 50

Note: Effect % represents the effectiveness of the material handling equipment. This equals the ratio of the distance traveled while carrying a load to the total distance traveled.

· Once all the material handling information has been entered, save the new information. Then exit the material handling products, part routings, and the product file windows. STEP 3: Draw Material Handling Paths, Calculate Material Handling Costs and Distances, and Generate Scaled Product Flow Lines

**you may want to turn ortho on to make this step easier· Under the Diagram menu select calculate.· When the Calculation Variables dialog appears, select the Actual Path Type, Manually radio button, Material Handling Cost radio button, and set the scale factor to 5. Click Ok to complete setting the calculation variables and to start calculations.· Next you must select the workcenter points, so click OK on the AutoCad message concerning the workcenter points. You must now select workcenter points for each of the workcenters. Follow the commands from the AutoCad command window to select locations for each of the points corresponding name on the layout (shown below). Then continue with the AutoCad commands to draw the actual material handling paths. These paths are illustrated in the layout below. The path thicknesses will change and flow arrowheads will be inserted in the next steps.

** If you mess up in the step above, erase or delete what you have done and start this step over again. To delete wrong paths, go to the path menu and select deleted paths. Then select the all paths radio button and start over.

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· When all the paths are drawn, hit enter and then click ok to save the file. Then a result dialog will appear giving you the calculations of the total distance, cost, moves, and time. View the results and click OK· When you return to the drawing screen, the paths that you drew have different thicknesses. The new thickness (width) of each path represents the total cost of each movement along that path. · Next, you can add flow arrows to your paths by selecting Add Flow Arrows in the Diagram menu and click OK to accept the default arrow setting.

STEP 4: Generating a Material Handling Report

· Under the Result menu, select Generate Simple Flow Results. When the report

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dialog appears, enter NSS as the company and Ladder as the project. Then click on the Workcenters radio button to generate the report by workcenter. Click OK to view the report giving the distances, costs, and intinsitys for each move. Then close the results and continue with the tutorial.

STEP 5: Change material handling cost by moving workcenters and reducing the number of material handling equipment used.

By looking at the layout you can see that by moving the step and rail workcenter closer to the receiving dock, we can decrease the path distances from the receiving dock to reduce material handling costs.

· First we will delete the current path between the steps and rails workcenters and the receiving docks. In the path menu, select delete path. Select the Move Group radio button and click OK to select the group of workcenters. Type C in the command window and press enter to specify a crossing window. Then draw a window around both the rail and step workcenters and hit enter.

* If you used ortho earlier, you may want to turn it off before the next step.· Now we will move the two workcenters closer to the receiving dock. Use the AutoCAD move command (type m in command window) to move each workcenter to general location illustrated below.

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· Next you will redraw the new paths which we have removed. Select Calculate in the Diagram menu and Click Ok to accept the current accept the current Calculation Variables. Then draw the new paths by following the directions in the command window as you have done before to draw the paths. The new paths are shown below. When you have drawn all the paths, hit enter and view the reductions in total distances, cost, and time. Click OK and as before insert arrows to represent the direction of path flow (Step 3).

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· Now since the traveling distances have decreased for the step and rail workcenters, we will no longer need two fork trucks. Select FactoryFLOW Editor (FFEDIT) from the FFData menu. Highlight the ladder data and click on Mhand. Select the FORK data and change the quantity to one. Click Update and save the new data. Exit the FFEDIT windows and go to Calculate under Diagram to see the cost reduction (accept default settings). Then click OK.

Step 6: Generate Material Handling Equipment Utilization Report

· Under the Result menu, select Generate Material Hand Utilization. Enter company and project names if necessary and click OK. View the utilization report and close.

Step 7: Generate a Distance Intensity Chart

FactoryFlow’s distance intensity chart is a scatter chart which graphically represents the paths’ lengths vs. intensities (number of moves along bath). In the optimal layout, the points will be close to the X and Y axes. · Select the Distance-Intensity Chart from the Result menu or type DICHART at the command window. You will need to pick a start point for you chart, so pick an empty outside of the facility layout. If NSS produced more than one product, this chart would have points for each product (see Appendix A).

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· To display the attributes of a point on the distance intensity chart, select Query DI Point (PTATT) command in the Result menu. Then pick a point on the chart to display the information related to that point. When you are finished looking at the report click OK to return to the drawing screen. You may want to zoom out to the entire area for the next step.

Step 8: Generate a Product-Quantity Chart

· Select Product-Quantity Chart (PQCHART) from the Result menu. You will be ask to choose a start point, so pick a point outside the facility layout to display the chart. If NSS Ladders produced more than one product, each of the products would be displayed on this chart (see Appendix B).

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At this point, you have completed the FactoryFLOW tutorial or the analysis of NSS Ladder’s manufacturing facility. This tutorial was produced from existing FactoryFLOW tutorials which are available on the IE 453 homepage. The online tutorials have larger and more complex examples of material handling analysis using FactoryFLOW. These tutorials also contain more detail on the steps and present a few additional steps. Overall, the NSS Ladder Analysis gives a simple example to perform the basic functions of FactoryFLOW.

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Appendix A

Appendix B

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