Utilizing cut trees as design skeletons for facility layout

Facility layout provides a fertile area for the application of optimization models. There is a major cost associated with constructing or reconfiguring a facility. In addition, the number of layout possibilities is so large that human designers frequently have difficulty in generating good layouts. A cut tree is proposed here as the design skeleton for a family of facility layouts. It has some very attractive properties when used as part of an interactive system to support the designer in the analysis, construction and improvement of facility layouts. The cut tree has proven to be both easy to use and very powerful in aiding designers to generate quality layouts