According to Canem and Williamson (1998), layout planning is important because it usually represents the largest and most expensive resources for an organization. Moreover, the equipment location on the factory floor has an impact on several factors such as level of in-process inventory, transfer batch sizes, difficulty in managing activities, and moving people and products, among others. Therefore, the study of layout concepts and the development of a layout design that aims at optimizing production are of crucial importance for production system improvement. Thus, this study presents a new layout design model of job shop environments with a high variety of parts. The model was developed as part of a PhD research project and was applied in some companies in the metal-mechanic sector. The results obtained showed the efficiency of the model developed. The purpose of the model is to lead the project team to develop layout alternatives that are consistent with the principles and concepts of lean production. It is worth mentioning again that the model was developed for environments with high variety of parts, and due to the difficulty in designing the layout in these environments, companies end up adopting the functional layout, a concept that presents serious problems such as excessive transport, high levels of in-process inventories, etc.
Layout; Lean production; Job shop
