Layout

The facility layout model is used to place departments in rooms in order to

minimize the total distance traveled as a function of the distances between the
rooms and the flow between departments. In some cases, it is necessary to fix
certain departments to be located in specific rooms. Distances between rooms may
or may not be symmetric. (Usually they are, but this is not required.)

Data
The framework for layout is given by the number of departments or the number of
rooms that we assume to be the same, since each department must be assigned to
one and only one room.

The data that follows essentially consists of two tables of numbers, one for the
flows and one for the distances.

Method. There are two methods available. The default method is explicit
enumeration. This is guaranteed to find the optimal solution. Unfortunately, if the
problem size is too large this method will take too much time. A second method,
pairwise comparison is available. Unfortunately, this method is not guaranteed to
always find the best layout.

Interdepartmental flows. The number of trips from one department to another is

indicated in a table termed the flow matrix.
Distance matrix. The distance between rooms is entered in this table. Typically the
distance matrix will be symmetric. The choice is made at the beginning of the
module. That is, the distance from room i to room j is the same distance as for
room j to room i.
A sample set of data appears in the preceding screen. Notice in this example that
the distances are symmetric.

Solution

The solution simply is to assign the departments to the appropriate rooms. The
total movement is also noted.

Room assignments. On the right of each department row will appear the room in
which the department should be placed. In our example Materials should be placed
in room 2, Welding in room 1, etc.

Total movement. The sum of the products of the number of trips multiplied by the
distance is listed at the top. This is what we are trying to minimize. Notice that for
our example the minimum total movement is 13,000.

It is possible to display the individual multiplications of room-to-room distances

by process-to-process flows. This is shown (partially) in the screen that follows.
In order to demonstrate pairwise comparison we have taken the same example but
changed the method and solved it. The results are displayed below. Notice that,
indeed, pairwise comparison did not find the optimal solution since the movement
under pairwise comparison, 15200, is larger than the movement under explicit
enumeration.
Fixing Departments in Specific Rooms

If the room name appears in the column labeled Fixed Room, that department will
be fixed in that room. Suppose that in our previous example we are required to have
Materials placed in room 1. Then, to accomplish this, we place room 1" in the row
for Materials in the Fixed Room column using the drop-down box.

The solution follows. The room assignments are, of course, different, and the total
movement is, of course, greater than the optimal solution for the unrestricted problem.