14 CHAPTER 1 20. Seek input and adjust. Ask your peer-level engineers and managers to review your plan to see if they can punch holes in your design before you present it to management for approval. 21. Seek approvals, take advice, and change as needed. 22. Install the layout. At this stage, the plan comes together and is one of the most rewarding times, as well as one of the most stressful. 23. Start production. Anticipate that many things will go wrong. No one has started up any production line without some problems; don't expect you will be the first. You will get better each time, but it will never be perfect. 24. Adjust as needed and finalize project report and budget performance. Many engineering professors and industrial consulting firms are trying to develop a computer formula for manufacturing facilities design. So far, they have developed computer algorithms and simulations for parts of the analysis. Facilities planners will use these tools like any other tool, but the quality of the design will depend on how well they analyze the data, not the computer's ability to solve prob- lems. Therefore, it is best to take a systematic approach, one step at a time, and to add information at each step. When completed this way, the results appear like magic (a great plant layout result). A mature layout technician knows that a good layout is inevitable if the procedure is followed. The manufacturing facilities design procedure is a general plan of the project. THE MANUFACTURING FACILITIES DESIGN PROCEDURE The quality of a manufacturing facility design (the plant layout blueprint) depends on how well the planner collects and analyzes the basic data. The blueprint is the final step of the design process and the step during which novice planners want to start. This is like reading the last page of a book first. Resist jumping into the layout phase before collecting and analyzing the basic data. If you have faith and follow the procedure, a great design will, like magic, automatically appear. The following is a systematic way of thinking about a project: 1. Determine what will be produced; for example, a toolbox or swing set or lawn mower. 2. Determine how many will be made per unit of time; for example, 1,500 per 8-hour shift. 3. Determine what parts will be made or purchased complete-some companies buy out all parts, and they are called assembly plants. Those parts the company makes itself require fabrication equipment and considerably more design work. 4. Determine how each part will be fabricated. This is called process planning and is usually done by a manufacturing engineer, but in many projects, the