OPTIMZATION OF MACHINE SHOP LAYOUT FOR AUTOMOTIVE SPARES MANUFACTURING UNIT USING QFD (QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT)

ABSTRACT In today's competitive working environment quality assurance stands important in almost all the sectors across the globe. Quality need to ensured in all processes, right from ordering of materials, performance in workstation in an organized manner and packing the finished goods till the shop floor end with due considerations upon work and cost. In this paper, it has been highlighted that quality assurance can be confirmed through focusing on the design of machine shop layout with relevance to automotive parts manufacturing unit. Using QFD (Quality Function Deployment ) attempt has been made to evaluate different factors of plant layout like flexibility , linear flow of materials , Ergonomics , safety , cost of production , Inventory space utilization, floor ambience etc . The above listed factors are categorized in two levels such as customer requirements and company requirements as demanded in Quality function deployment (QFD) and a house of quality table is constructed. Survey technique using Questionnaire has been adopted to collect Data from 30 respondents. The respondents were chosen among the final year students of Mechanical Engineering in Manakula Vinayagar Institute of Technology. The Objectives of the problem is to improve the production throughput by simplifying the flow pattern of materials by reducing the wastages within layout such as inventory and space consumption of layout. Keywords: QFD (Quality Function Deployment, Plant Layout, Ergonomics, Safety, Linear flow of Materials.