ISCOM/305 week 3 discussion question 1

An interesting topic that I found in this chapter was the discussion of layouts. Layout planning is very important for a company–especially a large company–to consider. Layout planning is important for various reasons such as flexibility, cost reductions, convenience, and space. I work in the health care field, so I appreciate the text to give an example of how layout planning can be used in a hospital. Our convalescent home just recently added a “subacute unit” on the west side of the building. Now, our building has 38 rooms with an average of three beds in each room. The facility itself has 3 nursing stations. One positioned on the east end, and two on the west end. Since subacute patients require a higher, more “intense” level of care compared to our skilled nursing side on the east end, the new subacute rooms that were added were the rooms closest to the west end of the two stations. This gave nurses and supervisors to attend to these patients more efficiently because the subacute rooms were placed very near the nursing stations. This design, I believe, is called block diagramming under the process layout. This is just one example of how important it is to consider layout planning in a company. Would anyone like to share experiences with layout planning and how did it benefited your company?