Layout Redesign: Size the Travel Gain Before You Move Anything

Layout Redesign sits in the Improve phase of RDMAICS. The product describes it plainly: redesign the physical or digital workspace layout to reduce travel, motion waste, and handoff delays. That is the whole job. You are not solving quality defects here. You are shortening the path that work takes between the people and systems that touch it.

You reach for this tool after Analyse, not before. By the time you open it, you should already know why the process is slow. If your cause statement says people walk, search, chase, or wait on a handoff, layout is in play. If your cause statement says the rules are unclear or the data is wrong, layout is not your lever and this tool will waste your time.

The value of the tool is that it forces a cause into a specific shape. Each row names an area, names the issue in that area, names the action you would take, and attaches a number to the travel you expect to remove. That structure is what turns a diagnosis into something a sponsor can approve as a pilot.

The example below is fictional. It is the sample data the tool ships with, and it is used here so you can follow every step without needing your own numbers first.

The case is an accounts payable team. Four areas were flagged during Analyse. The desk cluster has scattered printers and scanners. The filing cabinets require manual retrieval. The approval workflow runs on email with no visibility. Vendor queries arrive by phone and email with no tracking.

Two of those are physical. Two are digital. That mix is deliberate and it is worth noticing early. Layout Redesign does not only mean floor plans. A handoff that bounces through three inboxes is a layout problem too, even though nobody walks anywhere.

Each row carries a redesign action and an expected benefit. The desk cluster becomes a centralised digital capture station, with motion waste expected to fall 60 per cent. The filing cabinets are removed in favour of a digital archive, with retrieval time expected to fall 90 per cent. The approval workflow moves to a workflow tool with dashboards, with approval delay expected to fall 70 per cent. Vendor queries move to a portal ticketing system, with query resolution expected to fall 50 per cent.

The worksheet has six columns and they are all doing work. The row number keeps the conversation orderly in a workshop. Area or Zone names the place. Current Layout Issue is the finding you carried in from Analyse. Redesign Action is the change you propose. Distance Saved in metres is the physical travel you expect to remove. Expected Benefit is the outcome in the units that matter to the people who do the work.

Fill the Area column first and fill it narrowly. AP team desk cluster is a good entry. Finance is not. If you cannot stand in the area or open the screen, the row is too vague to act on.

Then write the issue as an observation rather than a judgement. Scattered printers and scanners is observable. Poor organisation is not. The same rule applies to the digital rows. Email-based, no visibility tells you what to fix. Inefficient process does not.

Distance Saved is where teams get careless. Two rows in the sample carry a value, 18 metres and 25 metres. Two rows carry zero, because moving an approval from email to a workflow tool removes no walking at all. Leaving those as zero is the honest entry. The benefit is still real, and it is captured in the Expected Benefit column instead.

The result panel is titled Layout travel reduction. It is built from the worksheet and it shows three figures: current distance, future distance, and distance removed. In the sample as shown, all three read 0 m.

That is not a fault. The panel states that distance reduction is calculated from the editable current and future distances. Those are separate inputs. The Distance Saved column on the worksheet records your estimate per row. The result panel needs you to supply the current and future distance for the layout so it can compute the reduction. Until you do, the totals stay at zero.

Underneath the totals, the four areas are listed with a current distance and future distance pairing for each. That is the structure you populate. Doing so forces a second look at the 18 metres and the 25 metres you wrote earlier, because now you have to say what the distance is before and after rather than only what you think you will save.

The tool also offers an AI review that explains the result. Treat it as a second reader of your worksheet, not as a source of numbers.

The first decision is sequencing. Four rows is four changes, and you will not run them all at once. The sample gives you an obvious order. Removing the filing cabinets carries the largest distance figure at 25 metres and the largest expected benefit at 90 per cent on retrieval time. It is also self contained. That is a pilot candidate.

The second decision is scope of the pilot. The two digital rows, approval workflow and vendor query handling, both require a new system. Those are longer commitments. Splitting them from the physical rows keeps your pilot small enough to reverse if the gain does not appear.

The third decision is the measurement plan. Each expected benefit is a hypothesis with a number attached. Motion waste down 60 per cent gives you something to test. Before you move a printer, record how the team moves today. Without that baseline you will finish the pilot with an opinion rather than a result.

The fourth decision is whether to proceed at all. If the current and future distances you enter produce a small reduction, the honest answer may be that layout is not your constraint and the cause sits elsewhere.

The most common mistake is filling the Distance Saved column with optimistic numbers because a blank cell feels incomplete. Two of the four sample rows sit at zero and that is correct. A digital workflow change removes handoff delay, not metres. Padding those cells makes the total look better and makes the pilot result look worse.

The second mistake is confusing the worksheet estimate with the calculated result. The worksheet holds your per row expectation. The result panel holds the computed reduction from the current and future distances you enter. They are different inputs and they should agree. If they do not, one of them is wrong.

The third mistake is writing redesign actions that are really projects. Workflow tool with dashboards is a direction, not a weekend task. Break it down before you commit, or run the physical rows first while the system work is scoped.

The fourth mistake is skipping the walk. Teams estimate distance from a floor plan and then discover that nobody takes the straight line. Walk the route. Count the steps. Then fill the cell.

Layout Redesign will not validate your cause. It assumes you arrived with a diagnosis from Analyse and it will happily accept a wrong one. A beautifully filled worksheet built on a mistaken cause produces a confident plan that does not move the outcome.

It will not tell you whether the expected benefits are achievable. The 60, 90, 70 and 50 per cent figures in the sample are expectations entered by the person filling the worksheet. The tool records them. It does not test them. Only the pilot does that.

It will not cost the change. There is no column for capital, licences, or the hours your team spends during transition. A 25 metre saving may be worth having or may be the most expensive 25 metres in the building. You need that conversation elsewhere.

It will not account for behaviour. People find workarounds. Remove the filing cabinets and someone may start keeping a personal folder. That is a Control and Sustain problem, and the next phases of RDMAICS exist for it. What this tool gives you is a change shaped well enough to pilot, with a number you can check afterwards. That is enough, and it is more than most layout changes ever get.