The goal is to get your factory running like a well-oiled machine, and this involves various aspects related to design and planning. For starters, the layout determines where materials, people and information flow through, which will affect the costs and effectiveness of the overall operation.

Poor design can lead to inefficiency, high costs, and eventually, unhappy customers. Good design is good for business on every level – from safety and efficiency to waste reduction and workplace satisfaction. Let’s take a look below at 5 rules you should closely adhere to and ensure your factory operates smoothly.

The type of layout you choose will depend on product volume and variety. One factory can produce a broad array of bespoke products in small volumes, while another produces a continuous stream of identical products in large volumes. Once you have determined your type of operation (jobbing, batch or continuous), this will play a role in selecting your layout – process, cell or product layout. They differ in processes according to the characteristic of your products.

Getting the right space for your factory activities is beneficial to support the varying processes. Our property at Space @ Tampines offers warehouses for rent, ranging from 1,247 to 13,671 sqft, which come with attached toilets. Located near TPE, this ramp-up property has close proximity to nearby industrial estates, such as Changi and Seletar, that offers the ideal business space for clean & light B2 industrial activities.  Facilities include 6 loading bays with dock levellers, 40-footer accessibility, 24-hour access & CCTV, units with sprinklers, wide ramp-up and free shuttle bus service to & from Tampines MRT.

To have a better understanding on the intricacies of your operations, it is essential to map each of the relevant processes. Flow charts can offer a diagrammatic representation of individual processes – you can have an overview and a detailed idea of each work-centre that comprises of machinery, storage, assembling and packing area. You can then highlight the tasks that will be undertaken by each work centre, the sequencing of operations, and material and information flow.

In order to optimise the layout, it requires an understanding of the relationships between the different work centres within your factory. To get started on your factory’s relationship chart, list the work centres side by side – every pairing of work centres constitutes a proximity rating for the relationship. This rating reflects how desirable the physical proximity is between any given two work centres. Any pairing that has undesirable interactions, for example, when one work process is disruptive to another operation or introduces contaminants into the other, can be applied a negative proximity rating. It can range from necessary and important to unimportant and highly undesirable. This can help you design a factory layout that satisfies these requirements.

Having a good location for your factory activities can go a long way. Our property at Tuas Vista offers a professional corporate frontage, with units suitable for workshop, ancillary office, and factory warehouse for rent under one roof. Most businesses take more than one type of unit for convenience, such as combining warehouse office rental to support their operations. This six-storey building has a strategic location that is ideal for tenants specialising in construction, engineering and logistics activities. Located at Tuas South, it is also surrounded by oil & gas companies as well as large pharmaceutical and biomedical corporations. Units available for rent range from 2,649 to 3,821 sqft – with facilities such as 3 loading bays, 2 cargo lifts, 25-hour access, season parking and in-house canteen.