A blending plant is a straight line: material in one end, pallets out the other. Most of the layout mistakes we are called in to fix come from letting that line cross itself.
Keep the flow one-directional
- Raw material store, weighing, mixing, filling, quarantine, finished goods — in that physical order, on one axis.
- Untested product must be physically separated from released product, or someone will eventually ship a failed batch.
- Put the QC lab between filling and quarantine so samples travel metres, not minutes.
Size the store, not the mixer
- The mixer is rarely the constraint. Raw material storage almost always is, because container quantities arrive all at once.
- Allow six weeks of raw material at full output, plus space for two weeks of finished goods.
- Drums need dedicated bunded space with the right fire separation. Retro-fitting it is expensive.
Plan for the power going out
- Choose a batch size a generator can finish. A high-shear disperser stopped mid-batch on a filled vessel is a serious restart problem.
- Write the restart procedure before you need it, and train on it.
- Site the disperser where a vessel can be craned out if it does set — it happens.
The short version
Buy storage before you buy capacity, and never let untested product share a floor with released product.