A hierarchical analytic hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis methodology for the facilities layout design problem

Layout design often has a significant impact on the performance of a manufacturing or service industry system and is usually a multiple-objective problem. Neither an algorithmic nor a procedural layout design methodology is usually effective in solving a practical design problem. This paper proposed a hierarchical analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to solve a plant layout design problem. A computer-aided layout-planning tool was used to generate a considerable number of layout alternatives as well as to generate quantitative decision-making unit outputs. The qualitative performance measures were weighted by AHP. DEA was then used to solve the multiple-objective layout problem. Empirical illustrations from a practical case study illustrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.