For instance, I was once in charge of an old machine that had "stacked dryers."  I am not suggesting we go back to such an arrangement, in fact, at today's speeds the structure needed to keep these things from swaying may outweigh any other costs savings we might find.  What I am suggesting is that in this layout configuration, there was a building feature that was noticeable: there was no clear craneway the length of the machine.  There was a dry end crane and a wet end crane, but never the twain shall meet.

Look at the dryer section of a modern machine. It is tall, it has a hood and it has crane rails the entire length of it.

What if we lowered the roof of the building in the dryer section such that the dryer hood and the roof were one and the same?  We can then have a dry end crane and a wet end crane--they can just never come together. 

What if, further, we brought the tending aisle in fairly close to the dryer section.  After all, it is seldom that anything the width of the machine is pulled in and out of the dryer section.  Doctor strongbacks might be inserted or removed, but rarely.

If the tending side is on the outside of the building, large doors could be strategically installed in this wall to insert or remove larger items (dryers) if needed.  In fact, the building could be built with solid walls, but appropriate framing so even these doors are not installed until necessary.

With this arrangement, one may be able to knock 15 feet off the height and 20 feet off the width of the building.  If the dryer section if 150 feet long, this saves  292,500 cubic feet of building volume.  If you recall from last week, our original building volume was 1,050,000 cubic feet. This new design represents a savings of 28% of the building volume.  Now we are talking about real money, and I doubt we have done 1/10 of 1% harm to operational and maintenance efficiency.

 

Check my math--I am known to be sloppy!