A job shop in the new industrial area of Six of October, Egypt, wants to arrange four work centers to minimize the interdepartmental material-handling cost. The flow and the current layout are shown below. lop52 X Y M Z 80 m Number of workpieces moved between the different work centers per day FROM/TO X Y M Z X — 300 600 800 Y 400 — 400 0 M 0 0 — 600 Z 0 300 0 —

a) What is the “load * distance,” or “movement cost,” of the current layout?

b) Propose an improved layout and compute the movement cost of the proposed layout.