Food Safety

Every Activity, One Direction of Flow: Model Layouts That Stop Design Mistakes Before They Start

By AGS Compliance Team March 24, 2026 1 min read
Every Activity, One Direction of Flow: Model Layouts That Stop Design Mistakes Before They Start

Ask ten designers to lay out a sausage plant and you will get ten layouts — several of them with product doubling back through dirty zones. Food facility design has a right answer: one direction of flow, from receiving to dispatch, and it looks different for every activity. Getting it wrong is expensive; copying it right is cheap.

Why Model Designs Beat Blank Pages

This figure set opens with the method — Figure 0, the logical distribution of zones in the I-shape — then applies it to the facility types designers actually face. Instead of deriving flow logic from scratch, you adapt a proven reference layout to your site and scale.

What the Figure Set Contains

Twelve activity-classified figures accompanying the AGS Design & Construction Guidelines:

  • Figure 0 — the I-shape method of zone distribution
  • Fruit and vegetable processing; restaurants, hotel and central kitchens
  • Livestock, sheep and poultry slaughterhouses
  • Sausage production and fish canning plants
  • Bakeries and edible oil refining plants
  • Central markets — activity layout

The set is organised so a reviewer can move from method to model in minutes: the organising logic is explained up front, each figure is registered with revision history and approval, and the whole set is issued as the companion to AGS-DGL-01, the Design & Construction Guidelines — so the drawings and the rules always agree.

Who It Helps

Architects and facility planners, franchise development teams, investors evaluating sites, and plan-review officials who need a reference against which to judge submitted drawings. Authorities can adopt the figures as the visual standard for plan approval.

Get the Guideline

Get the Model Designs by Activity figure set from AGS — instant digital download, fully editable Microsoft Word, ready to put a proven layout under your next project. Because it arrives as a Word document rather than a locked PDF, you can add your logo, adjust values to your jurisdiction and issue it as a controlled document within your own management system — no retyping, no reformatting.

Product: Model Designs by Activity — available as an instant-download, fully editable package from AGS (SKU AGS-03-026).

The toolkit for this guide: Model Designs by Activity - Figure Set (Design & Engineering Series). Instant download, fully editable, yours to keep.

AGS Compliance Team

Our toolkits and guides are written by practising auditors who assess management systems against ISO, BRCGS, HACCP and Halal schemes. Every document reflects what assessors actually look for.