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Multi-criteria decision making approaches for Facility
Layout (FL) evaluation and selection: A survey
Mariem Besbes, Roberta Costa Aonso, Zolghadri Marc, Faouzi Masmoudi,
Mohamed Haddar
To cite this version:
Mariem Besbes, Roberta Costa Aonso, Zolghadri Marc, Faouzi Masmoudi, Mohamed Haddar. Multi-
criteria decision making approaches for Facility Layout (FL) evaluation and selection: A survey.
Mohamed Haddar, Fakher Chaari, Abdelmajid Benamara, Mnaouar Chouchane, Chak Karra, Nizar
Aifaoui. Design and Modeling of Mechanical Systems-III, Springer, pp.613-622, 2017, 978-3-319-66696-
9. �10.1007/978-3-319-66697-6_59�. �hal-01711799�
Multi-criteria decision making approaches for
Facility Layout (FL) evaluation and selection: A
survey
Mariem BESBES
1, 2
, Roberta COSTA AFFONSO
1
, Marc ZOLGHADRI
1
,
Faouzi MASMOUDI
2
, Mohamed HADDAR
2
1
Quartz-Supmeca, 93407 Saint-Ouen, France
mariem.besbes@supmeca.fr, roberta.costa@supmeca.fr, marc.zolghadri@supmeca.fr
2
University of Sfax, LA2MP-ENIS, B.P 1173, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia
faouzi.masmoudi@enis.run.tn, mohamed.haddar@enis.rnu.tn
Abstract. The aim of this paper is to provide a survey related to the criteria that
affect the effectiveness of a facility layout. The design criteria can be classified
according to the previous research into two categories which are qualitative and
quantitative indicators. Then, this paper presents a review of different Multi-
Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques that have been proposed in the lit-
erature to pick the most suitable layout design. These methods are particularly
suitable to deal with complex situations, including various criteria and conflicting
goals which need to be optimized simultaneously. The review serves as a guide to
those interested in how to evaluate and select the most appropriate layout which
can handle an expanded range of manufacturing companies. Finally, we present a
discussion followed by a conclusion.
Keywords: Multi-criteria decision making, facility layout evaluation, facility lay-
out design selection, Survey.
1 Introduction
The layout problem is concerned with finding the most efficient arrangement of
the facilities with the available floor area, evaluating the layout design alternatives
and selecting the most appropriate design as illustrated in fig.1. The layout design
problem can have a significant impact on the overall effectiveness of the manufac-
turing systems. Hence, it has been an active research area for several decades. A
lot of research has been dedicated to present the different approaches for the gen-
eration of layout. Detailed review is provided by (Kusiak and Heragu 1987),
2 M. BESBES et al.
(Meller and Gau 1996), (Singh and Sharma 2006), (Drira et al 2007), and (Nordin
and Lee 2016). However, no research has been found to survey the multi-criteria
layout evaluation and selection approaches through a literature review since ex-
cept (Lin and Sharp 1999). The aim of this proposed study is to present a survey
about the criteria and the techniques considered by the decision makers for evalu-
ating and selecting the most appropriate layout. Hence, we will study the part B as
shown in Fig.1. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the evalu-
ating criteria. Section 3 provides an overview of the multi-criteria decision ap-
proaches. An analysis of the current and future trends is discussed in section 4 fol-
lowed by a conclusion.
Fig. 1 Conceptual framework of facility layout problem
2 Overview of the evaluating criteria
In this section, we summarize the principal criteria found in the collected pa-
pers for the evaluation and selection of a new configuration among a set of availa-
ble alternatives. These criteria can be classified into two categories: quantitative
and qualitative.
2.1 Quantitative criteria
Distance is the most popular criterion considered by the designer for the evalu-
ation of configurations. It was determined by the sum of the products of flow vol-
ume and rectilinear distance between the centroids of two facilities as shown in
equation 1. There is two ways for measuring the distances: distance between In-
put/ Output (I/O) points or centroid to centroid. The main objective function for
facility layout problem is to minimise the material handling cost according to the
travelled distance because handling work adds to cost but does not increase value
to products; consequently any unnecessary movements should be avoided.
Multi-criteria decision making approaches for FL evaluation and selection, A survey 3
Cost=
∑ ∑
𝑓
𝑖𝑗𝑗𝑖
*𝑑
𝑖𝑗
(1)
Note that: 𝑓
𝑖𝑗
is the material flow between the facilities i and j.
𝑑
𝑖𝑗
is the distance between facilities.
Adjacency of facilities is highly suggested due to some factors such as noise,
vibration, luminosity, sharing of operators or tools and Flow exchange density or
frequency. It was determined by the sum of all positive relationships between ad-
jacent facilities as shown in equation (2).
*
ij
ij
ij
Adjacency
l
r
(2)
Note that 𝑟
𝑖𝑗
is the closeness rating and 𝑙
𝑖𝑗
is the contact perimeter length be-
tween facilities i and j.
Shape ratio is defined as the maximum of the depth-to width and width-to-
depth ratio of the smallest rectangle that completely encloses the facilitate (Aiello
et al. 2006; Aiello et al.2012)
Space consists of five types (Lin and Sharp 1999): space for production ma-
chinery and material handling equipment, space for storage, space for personal
needs aisle space for material and personal movement and free space. Hence, the
production area include value added area and non value added area (Raman et
al.2009). It can be overused when there is not enough space for future activity or
underused when the shop floor are not fully used. To examine the effectiveness of
layout design, we should calculate the space utilisation rate as follows (Suo 2012):
i
i
s
ij
ij
A
R
AB
(3)
Note that 𝐴
𝑖
is the area of department i where equipment i is sitting and 𝐵
𝑗
is
the unusable space.
Products indicators are associated to throughput time, product earliness, prod-
uct lateness, and product blocked time. (Ben cheikh 2015) and (Ben cheikh 2016)
defined the throughput time as the period required for a single product to be pro-
duced. The product earliness is calculated when the product is finished before its
due date. However, the product lateness is computed when the product is finished
after its due date. These indicators are evaluated using event simulation software
like Arena, Witness, ProModel. Product blocked time is the waiting time for the
product in the queue until loaded on the machine to be processed.
Resources indicators are related to machine utilization, the number of machine,
and the number of operators that are used in a configuration.
Work in process is the set of unfinished items waiting for further processing in
a queue or buffer storage. Optimal configuration aims to minimize work in pro-
cess. In fact, it requires storage space and cost. It affects the production rates by
slowing at bottlenecks.
4 M. BESBES et al.
2.2 Qualitative criteria
Flexibility is defined as the ability of the company to adapt to changes in its en-
vironment. In fact, flexibility is the ability to achieve a variety of tasks under a
wide range of operating conditions .We find several type of flexibility:
Volume flexibility is defined as the ability to function profitably at different
production volumes. This can be done by changing the number of facilities for ex-
ample.
Routing flexibility is described as the ability of a product to change path during
the production process.
Expansion flexibility is defined as the ease of increasing the production capaci-
ty of a production system. It can be quantified by the number of free space loca-
tions with good shape factors or usable area (Raman et al. 2009).
Accessibility has been defined by (Yang and Hung 2007) as the material han-
dling and operators paths. While designing the layout, we should save enough
space within or along the contours of the departments to allow the movement of
materials and personnel. Moreover, all servicing and maintenance points should be
readily accessible. For example, equipment should not be placed against a wall in
such a manner that necessary maintenance cannot easily be carried out.
Human issues cluster involves several aspects. First, it is related to the ease of
supervision control and communication between workers by the elimination for
example of hidden corners. Second, other criteria that are related to environment,
safety, security of operators should be taken into account.
Layout reconfigurability presents a facilitating level of rearrangement and/or
alteration of facilities to respond to new situations (Abdi 2009). The five main cri-
teria of layout reconfigurability are convertibility, modularity, mobility, reconfigu-
ration speed, and scalability.
All of the criteria are not explained in the text. However, a survey of different
criteria that are used in the literature to evaluate different layouts is provided in
Table1 wherein twenty three criteria are tabulated in columns A to w in order to
give a background for the designers.
