How can a facility be designed to support the company’s strategic intent? Have you been asked, or asked yourself, this question? If your answer is no, you are not alone. Many organizations lose their strategic focus when the decision to build a facility has been made.

In the rush to demonstrate progress, the planning phases may be shortened to the point of elimination so that a layout can be achieved. Many times, the synthesized layout becomes synonymous with success. The fact that options developed from solid analysis were not evaluated does not become evident until after occupancy, when "make it work" becomes the order of the day. This is hardly the best operating strategy.

Facilitating the corporate strategy

Strategic facility planning (SFP) supports corporate strategy by encouraging the design of facilities that satisfy strategic relationships. Figure 1 presents the key relationships that must be evaluated and accommodated in a successful facility design.

The ability to facilitate the interactions illustrated in Figure 1 should be a primary criterion in the discovery of layout options. Certainly, if it is a design criterion, it also should be incorporated into the evaluation criteria.

SFP succeeds by offering a holistic approach to identification and definition of company strategies and relationships. This success is not only through the use of existing relationships, it includes identification of the weak or nonexistent relationships, too. In fact, a formal statement of the key relationships and strategies is an initial input in the SFP process. These relationships become the key design criteria.

If a design criterion is missing, its vacancy will be highlighted in SFP. Once identified, omissions or weaknesses can be resolved. A company can improve its facility design as well as its competitive advantage through SFP.

According to author Karl Albrecht, "There are only two basic ways to establish competitive advantage: Do things better than the others or do things differently."

Figure 1 is missing an important element: the customer. Albrecht observes, "If you’re not serving the customer, you’d better be serving someone who is." The flat organization, partnering, and fast response strategies of today do not allow for anyone to be too far removed from the customer.

With this close interaction, the economics of customer cultivation become more important. It costs five times as much to create a new customer as it does to make the same sale to an existing customer.

• Designed to facilitate time compression

• Flexible, to allow adjustments for meeting rapid market changes

• Able to accommodate fast-to-market new products

• Focused for a small range of products

• Designed for a flat organization

• Planned at the lowest possible level

• Able to link suppliers, manufacturing, and customers

• Run by a few managers who facilitate decision-making

Facilities experts William Wrennall and Quartermann Lee have identified four basic elements and four derived elements for every layout. The basic elements are space planning identifiers, affinities, spaces, and constraints. The derived elements are the configuration diagram, the layout primitive, macro layout options, and the populated layout.

A seven-step approach

In its simplest form, SFP can be seen as a seven-step approach. Each step builds upon the information and procedures used in previous steps, ensuring that the four basic elements are identified and the four derived elements of the layout are satisfied. Each step must be understood and applied.

• functional departments (e.g., a powder paint unit);

• storage areas (e.g., tool crib); or

• building features (e.g., loading dock).

SPIs are classified further by purpose or the activity that they represent and are indicated by an extended version of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers process charting symbols (Figure 3).

Within the SPI definitions, the items, areas, and functions that are included and excluded should be noted. This is done to ensure that the fundamental elements are communicated.

• E is "especial"/close (touching, if possible)

• I is important/nearby

• O is ordinary/conveniently near

• U is unimportant

• X indicates that proximity is not desirable

• XX indicates that separation is important

These are demonstrated best on an affinity chart (which is similar to a mileage chart), with the SPIs listed along the side and the affinities posted in the look-up intersections.

This is a good time to develop and agree on tiebreakers, which are rules to apply when procedures do not provide a definite design choice. In many cases, the tiebreakers may create a placement protocol that incorporates elements from operations and manufacturing strategy.

The chart is converted into a graphical form called a configuration diagram that organizes the SPIs into an arrangement based on affinities (Figure 4). The arrangement is accomplished by using several SPI placement iterations. The A and E affinities are placed first, with subsequent iterations adding the I, O, X, and XX affinities.

• E = 3 orange lines

• I = 2 green lines

• O = 1 blue line

• X and XX = black, spring-like lines

Figure 5 illustrates this series of iterations.

Figure 6 is an example of how the configuration diagram can be used as a diagnostic tool. In this case, the production quantities were small and there were small flows of component parts. The strongest affinities were the non-flow relationships between various areas, departments, and functions.

The complexity was not because of material flow but was organizationally imposed. The figure indicates that manufacturing and operations strategy statements were missing and that there were multiple agendas. Unfortunately, many of these agendas had developed over time and were at cross purposes.

Step 3: Determine space requirements for each SPI. The space should reflect growth, either positive or negative, for each SPI over the planning horizon. The planning horizon should be between five and 10 years. This interval is best because any less may not allow for necessary growth and any more is probably a guess.

The SPI with the incorporation of space is the space-planning unit (Figure 7). Note that the quantity of space for an area or department changes as a step function based on population or depopulation.

Step 4: Develop a layout primitive. Substitute space-planning units for their corresponding SPIs in the configuration diagram. The result of the substitution is a layout primitive (Figure 8). The layout primitive is important because it is an unconstrained macro (block) layout. The next step will implement any constraints, including the building or its footprint.

Step 5: Generate macro layouts. Apply constraints to the layout primitive. The layout primitive is constrained into a footprint, which sometimes causes several solutions to present themselves. These multiple solutions are the primary macro layout options.

A number of considerations have to be taken into account during this step, including the SPI space and shape. The variability of changes to the shape or geometry of space indicates the dynamic nature of usable blocks of space and should be considered block dynamics. Block dynamics describe how the block assumes a characteristic geometry based on the population and orientation of the population. In addition, columns and column spacing have an impact on block dynamics.

Figure 9 illustrates the application of constraints, and Figure 10 demonstrates the resultant macro or block layout from the constraint application.

Aisles are a function of block placement to facilitate flow of people and materials. It is necessary to have a clear definition of aisle and code requirements to ensure aisle location and sizing. It is good practice to keep aisles straight and continuous without jogs or doglegs.

(Watch out at this point for practitioners of voodoo layout design who claim to use their own special process. In one such process, you start with a drawing of the facility footprint and cut out all the space planning units. Next, you play a corporate equivalent of pin the tail on the donkey by impaling each space planning unit with a pushpin on the footprint and soliciting ascending levels of decision-makers to come in and rearrange the "tails." The last player’s arrangement becomes the layout.)

Step 6: Evaluate the layout. Select the macro layout to be populated from the options generated in the previous step. The options benefit from consistent input of strategic data and relationship information. The SFP sequence is complete (Figure 11) and has generated several design criteria.

Step 7: Populate the layout. The final step is to populate the selected layout option. The term "populate" is more appropriate than "detail." Although detail is being incorporated, the population of the block validates the space planning unit with its associated block space and geometry.

When utilized, SFP provides the process to turn a facility into a facilitator of competitive advantage and customer-perceived added value. This is critical to remaining competitive today. As Albrecht points out, "The game is no longer won or lost based on who has the deepest pockets or access to the most capital. It is more and more being played on the basis of who can deploy resources most effectively to create customer value and competitive advantage. Big is no longer better. In some cases, it may not even be good."

For further reading

Albrecht, Karl, The Northbound Train, AMACOM, 1994.

Hill, T., "Choice of Process," Manufacturing Strategy, Macmillan, 1985.

Skinner, W., "The Focused Factory," Harvard Business Review, May/June 1974.

Wrennall, W. and Q. Lee, Eds., Handbook of Commercial and Industrial Facilities Management, McGraw Hill, 1993.

Wrennall, W., "Facilities Planning and Design: Foundation of the BPR Pyramid," Industrial Management, July/August 1997.

Wrennall, W., "Facilities Planning: Obsolete, Trivial, or Significant?" Management Services, 1997.