Integrated Lean Protocol for Production Layout

application in a small manufacturing company during facility relocation

Abstract

Micro and small enterprises often define the physical layout of their facilities intuitively, which builds permanent motion and transportation waste into the process. Facility relocation offers a rare opportunity to correct this situation, but established layout design methods assume engineering staff, historical data and timeframes that these companies lack. This study aims to develop and empirically validate a layout intervention protocol for small manufacturers, grounded in lean manufacturing and adjusted to the constraints of technological extension programs. Action research with a qualitative and quantitative approach was conducted in a small manufacturer in the interior of São Paulo state that was relocating to a new building, within an eighty-hour consultancy. The protocol, named PILP, organizes value stream mapping, spaghetti diagrams, the sort principle of 5S and three-dimensional modeling into six phases. Its application reduced motion in the cutting process by 43.33%, motion for raw material weighing by 60.48%, internal transportation by 25.45% and occupied area by 33.51%, with an estimated payback of 3.8 months. The results show that significant gains do not depend on sophisticated tools, but on organizing them in a sequence suited to the size of the company. As a contribution, the study proposes using the spaghetti diagram to verify the layout proposal before implementation and offers criteria for prioritizing interventions in small business support programs.