Optimized plant layouts reduce material handling, improve safety, and enhance production flow.
In most foundries, 15–30% of a worker's time is spent on non-value-added material movement — carrying ladles, dragging patterns, transporting castings between distant stations. An inefficient layout also creates safety hazards, cross-contamination between departments, and capacity bottlenecks that limit throughput even when individual machines run well.
Steel Support 24 designs plant layouts using systematic layout planning (SLP) methodology. We map existing material and personnel flows, measure inter-department travel distances, and identify the highest-cost movement loops. From this analysis we develop an activity relationship chart (ARC) that defines which departments must be adjacent and which should be separated.
Layout alternatives are developed as scaled 2D CAD drawings and evaluated against four criteria: material flow efficiency, space utilization, safety (emergency egress, crane coverage, heat zone separation), and future expansion flexibility. We present 2–3 layout options with quantified material handling cost comparisons.
For greenfield foundry projects, we design the complete plant from melt shop through moulding, core making, knockout, fettling, heat treatment, and finishing, including crane runway positions, compressed air and electrical distribution routing, and drainage planning.
For brownfield projects, we develop phased rearrangement plans that minimise production disruption during transition. Applicable to iron, steel, aluminium, and investment casting foundries from 500 to 50,000 sq ft floor area.
Yes. For brownfield projects we develop a phased relocation plan that moves one section at a time during planned maintenance shutdowns or low-production weekends. A typical rearrangement of a 5,000 sq ft department is completed in 2–3 phases over 6–8 weeks with minimal production impact.
Deliverables include scaled 2D CAD layout drawings (existing and proposed), material flow diagrams, activity relationship analysis, space utilization calculations, implementation phasing plan, and a cost-benefit summary showing projected reduction in material handling time and distance.
We provide process layout and equipment placement inputs for civil and structural engineers. We specify column-free spans, floor load requirements, crane runway heights, pit locations (for induction furnaces and knockout), and bay dimensions. Civil design is then executed by a structural engineering firm using our layout as the primary input.
