Question

Draw the layout of two wheeler service station. Justify the type of layout you have adopted.

Answer 1

Layout of Two Wheeler Service Station: [1] The major factors considered for service station, is an impact of location on sales and services and customer satisfaction. [2] Customers usually look about how close a service facility is, particularly if the process requires considerable customer contact. [3] Hence, service facility layouts should provide for easy entrance to these facilities from the freeways. [4] Well-organized packing areas, easily accessible facilities, well designed walkways and parking areas are some of the requirements of service facility layout. [5] Service facility layout will be designed based on degree of customer contact and the service needed by a customer. [6] These service layouts follow conventional layouts as required.

Considering all this parameters, in a two wheeler service station, Product Layout is adopted, where the activities for servicing a vehicle follows a sequence of operation irrespective of the type of vehicle.

The use of Product Layout in two wheeler service station is justified in the following circumstances: [1] The Product layout designed according to a process separate line for each product is considered. [2] As production flow is permanently in the form of product line, automatic or special purpose machines are used. [3] A specialized team of plant maintenance staff will look after the repair and maintenance of machines. [4] A Product Layout (also called a Flow Shop Layout) is one in which equipment or work processes are arranged according to the progressive steps by which the product is made. The path for each part is, in effect, a straight line.

All this parameters fulfilled by the two wheeler service station, so that the two wheeler service layout is lies in category of Product Layout. 

Process / Functional Layout:

1) New jobs with varying work contents and different operations sequences can be taken up without any difficulty

2) Variety of jobs makes the work interesting to the workmen

3) Imbalance of work in one section does not affect the working of the other section

4) Workers attains greater skills as they have to attend one type of machines and operations

5) Greater utilization of equipments

6) Breakdown of equipment. absenteeism of worker or non availability of certain spares does not dislocate the other activities in the service station

Combination Layout:

It is a combination of Product and Process Layout and it is utilized generally where

1) Product contains lot many components

2) Products require to be serviced in different types and varieties

The parts are serviced on facilities arranged in a process type of layout and they are assembled using product type of layout.