A Decision Support System for Facility Layout Changes

摘要

A manufacturing company attempts to organize its facilities in the most efficient way to serve the particular mission of that plant. Facility layout problem is classified into 2 areas: Green field design and facility re-layout problem (FRLP). Until today, most research on facility layout focuses on green field design whereas the facility re-layout problem is more common than green field design. Since layout change is unavoidable to adapt in today's dynamic environment, our focus is on the FRLP. For FRLP, it is necessary to compare existing layout with new changed one in terms of major performance criteria. A matrix-based approach is proposed in this paper, which is a subset of SLP (Systematic Layout Planning) procedure. In this approach, layout alternatives are evaluated procedurally by the criteria of traffic volume-distance. Proposed method deals with dynamic aspect by calculating traffic volume for future production schedule rather than only considering static distance reduction.