Facilities plan for a centralised timber depot for BedRock Mining Support (Pty) Ltd

Abstract

BedRock Mining Support (Pty) Ltd is a fully integrated timber-based mine support company that supplies timber support to the gold and platinum mines. BedRock runs a J.I.T process and therefore has a challenge to consistently produce and provide quality products to the platinum mines. This is due to the fact that timber has a limited shelf life and timber extraction from plantations is rendered during the wet months. Currently a buffer has been implemented, but can only serve mines within its region, therefore mines that fall outside this region will struggle obtain timber during the wet months. A proposed centralised site located back in the chain is seen to be a solution to the current concerns and the bigger picture. A facilities plan needs to be generated for management purposes of understanding the size of the depot that is required and layout to use as a benchmark when a physical site is determined. Research was done to determine the best methodology to apply to the project problem. Systematic planning procedures became the viable option and were then used to develop a design. The design involved defining the project environment, using quantitative and qualitative measurements to determine the degree of closeness for each department relative to each other. These measurements were then used to produce various charts and diagrams that assisted in the development of alternative facility layouts known as block layouts. These block layouts were then evaluated by means of three integrated techniques to finally reveal the most feasible layout design that BedRock would use in their New Centralised Depot. The size of the depot was calculated to be 20262 square meters and block layout 2 was deemed the most feasible layout design.