Application of the lean method in designing the layout of face mask manufacturing plants for the prevention of covid-19

The prolonged global coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) has affected all aspects of life, economy, and society, especially small and medium businesses. To meet this challenge, many companies are transforming models and reorganizing production and operations to adapt to this situation. These companies have adopted a variety of philosophies to remove non-value-added activities from their production processes to maintain efficiency, flexibility, and profitability. In the context of Industry 4.0, solutions are ready to combine automation technology together with the Lean manufacturing approach. Furthermore, when it comes to efficient use of resources (financial, labor, materials, machine, and equipment), Industry 4.0 should be applied to Lean Processes. Thus, this article shows how to apply the Lean method to optimize plant design to cut waste, improve the efficiency of input resources, increase labor productivity by reducing labor costs, waiting (man-to-man; man-machine), reduced movement, and redundancy of operations in the workflow. Especially, the paper uses the SLP (Systematic Layout Planning) method to arrange the areas, material flow, and supply chain in the factory, Lean application to visualize the factory and combines IoT (Internet of Things). Moreover, using automation and Lean Production theory will support much for factory construction in the future, minimizing irrationalities when applied in practice. The result of the paper will mention a case study on the design and simulation of a face mask plant