Plant-Within-Plant and Focused Factories

A single facility is rarely proficient in more than a few Key Manufacturing Tasks. A facility that is ill-designed, attempts too much or is optimized for the wrong task can be a millstone. 

Facility planning can help address this strategic issue using the "plant-within-plant" concept.

 Here, the plant layout has regions that become, essentially, standalone factories. Each has (at least substantially) its own area and infrastructure such as maintenance, purchasing and engineering.

The figure illustrates this with an example from one of our clients. Two major product lines had conflicting demands from customers and conflicting demands on the factory's infrastructure. In addition, one of the product lines had highly dissimilar processes. The factory was split into three Focused Factories, as shown.