Improving Business Performance With Lean, Second Edition

CHAPTER 11

Collocate

Job Shop Versus Work Cell Layouts

One tactic to reduce transportation time is to collocate sequential steps of a process. We will discuss this idea in the context of the traditional manufacturing setting, but later in the chapter, we will also describe how this idea can be applied to administrative processes. Although transportation time is the most apparent type of waste that collocation addresses, our discussion will identify other types of waste that are also reduced by collocation.

One way to arrange a factory is called a job shop layout, where similar pieces of equipment are located in their own department (see Figure 11.1). For example, all the drill presses that drill, tap, and bore holes are located in the same area, ...