Facility layout design considering risk for single-period and multi-period cases.

Abstract

The most desirable characteristic of a facility layout is its ability to maintain its efficiency over time while coping with the uncertainty in product demand. A traditional facility layout design method is governed by the flow intensity between departments, which is the product flow quantity between two departments. Hence, an error in the product demand assessment can render the layout inefficient with respect to material handling costs. Most of this research integrates uncertainty in the form of probability of occurrence of different from-to charts. In an environment where the variability of each product demand is independent, the derivation of “probabilistic from-to chart” based scenarios cannot be used to address uncertainty of individual demands. This dissertation presents a facility layout problem approach to deal with the uncertainty of each product demand in the design of facility layout. Two procedures are presented: the first procedure is utilized to assess the risk associated with the layout, while the second procedure is used to develop the layout that minimizes risk. Results from case studies have shown that the procedure results in reduction of risk by as much as 68 percent.