A ‘fuzzy’ approach to facilities lay-out planning

Various approaches to and techniques for facilities lay-out problems are reviewed and a fuzzy set theory based ‘construction’ type heuristic for a block lay-out design problem, formulated using the linguistic variables representing flow, control, process, organization personnel and environmental relationships between facility pairs, is presented. The problem-solving strategy, which consists of procedures for aggregating experts’ opinions, the location, selection and placement of facilities, and for evaluating layout, is illustrated with a numerical example. The performance of the ‘fuzzy’ heuristic compares well with the established procedures ALDEP and CORELAP. Areas for further investigation for making the present implementation more effective in dealing with real problems are identified.