Dynamic business conditions create the need to frequently re-evaluate a company’s use of space to optimize investment and cost. Over time, incremental changes to facility designs lead to improper space planning and less than optimal use of capital. Our facility design consulting services will provide the optimum plans to support your current business and its future growth. Our industrial design services are specially structured to help our clients assess the impact of changes in operating strategy, corporate structure, new products, capacity requirement changes, or the need to lower operating costs. By engineering the facility and site concept to support your optimum manufacturing and distribution processes and systems, we provide solutions that minimize capital investment and reduce business risk.

We define facility needs by first understanding your production and operational requirements. DeHart Consulting believes the most effective facility designs are engineered from lean six-sigma first principles. Facility design consulting and industrial engineering has been at the heart of our practice since we began our practice in the 1990’s. Our industrial and process engineers come from manufacturing environments in the semiconductor, electronics, and photonics industries and take a hands-on approach to solving problems.

Unlike many industrial design firms, before designing new facilities, we first identify the key inputs and opportunities to improve the utilization of existing space. At times our clients don’t need additional space, but only to make more efficient use of their existing facilities. DeHart Consulting’s industrial and process engineering expertise is backed by an extensive team of technical staff, comprised of process engineers, manufacturing operations specialists, and experience facility designers. Once the decision is made to restructure existing space or add additional space, our commitment is clear. We believe that before we can declare a facility design consulting victory, our clients must achieve their operational goals. These include:

• Achieving results within the budgeted footprint.
• Incorporation of the facility design and industrial engineering principles promulgated by lean manufacturing techniques.
  • Organize the factory around products, not functions.
  • Design lines for continuous flow from raw material to finished goods.
  • Reduce batch sizes until they are less than customer order sizes.
  • Reduce lead times until they are less than customer delivery requirements.
  • Eliminate non-value added work steps in the production process.
  • Design in operator check points that will assure quality (in-spec) production.
  • Store materials at the point of use.
  • Minimize the investment in facility floor space, equipment, and material inventories.
  • Reduce floor transactions to a minimum, two is the goal.
  • Develop a team-based organizational structure.
• Optimization of the layout and the flow of materials through the facility to improve space utilization and reduce labor is the ultimate goal of our facility design consulting projects. Only then can facility costs be minimized and an acceptable ROI be achieved, a fact lost on some industrial engineering firms.
• Acceleration in the flow of product through the facility, decreasing cycle times, improving set-ups and quality, and improving business processes. This increases capacity and reduces equipment and inventory requirement

Our industrial engineering, process engineering, material handling, and operations consulting specialists have extensive experience in the semiconductor, electronics, and photonics industries. Our facility design consulting efforts focus on the unique requirements of your business and the factors that affect it. We believe that only understanding these parameters, can our industrial engineers produce a system solution which meets your specific needs. These services provide the foundation for optimizing manufacturing and distribution processes that integrate people, equipment, technology, and facilities.

By focusing first on operational needs and then facilities issues, we deliver a site and facilities plan that:

• All end users will accept.
• The architects and construction professional will be able to integrate and construct.
  
• Will improve operational throughput and productivity.
• Provides modularity and flexibility to support future growth.
• Minimizes occupancy and operating costs.

Our facility design consulting services will help your business define the road map for growth, improve operating efficiency and return on assets.

Our deliverables include:

• Detailed facility layouts
• Process equipment lists
• Complete utility requirements
• Sustainability recommendations
• Worker Safety recommendations

DeHart Consulting is an industrial engineering firm whose strength is in implementation of facility designs. Working with the client’s end users, architects, and facilities professionals, we will handle the project from concept to completion.