Integrating the analytic hierarchy process and graph theory to model facilities layout

There is a trend in the research of facilities planning away from single-objective facilities layout techniques to multiple-objective methods. In this spirit, we introduce a new way of recognizing the multi-criteria nature of layout design. We integrate the Analytic Hierarchy Process with a graph theoretic-based DSS for producing a scaled block plan. The paper also reports on the application of this approach in designing the layout of an actual municipal building. The paper provides an illustration of effective modeling in industrial engineering.