Moving a Steel Production Plant

I'm currently working with a company that's planning to consolidate a couple of their warehouses into a much bigger warehouse that will also be manufacturing components there, ideally in the most efficient manner (that's my purview).

I would like to educate myself on plant moves of this scale. I've talked to colleagues that have undergone similar moves in the past and they all agree that there are no books on the matter and no one place with recorded lessons learned.

Is there anyone here that can point me in the right direction when it comes to plant moves?

 

Develop a plan and execute that plan.

When we moved we did it in stages. We had an office, tool room, production, and inventory. First thing we did was plan our layout in the new facility. We had all power and air run to where the machines would be. We ran ahead and built as much inventory as possible. We mover all the unused tooling and inventory first. That allowed us to continue shipping. A week later we moved the tool room and had that all hooked up. Next was the big kahuna, production. Took an entire week to move and a week to get hooked up and running. So we were down for two weeks. Last, a week later, was the office and anything that was left. So it was about 6 weeks total to move everything — start to finish. We had a plan with our customers on what and how we were going to re-qualify everything.

All in all it went off without a hitch. Customers didn’t even notice. It was very stressful, but we had a plan and executed it. Probably spent 6 months planning. Good luck.