TITLE : FACILITY LAYOUT AND LOCATION: AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH.

This book is written primarily for those college students who have an interest in facility layout and location problems. Students majoring in industrial engineering, management science, operations research, systems engineering, transportation science, and urban and regional design are logical candidates for a course which provides an analytical treatment of the subject of facility layout and location. Previous acquaintance with the subject of facility layout and location would be beneficial, but is not necessary. However, we do assume that the students have had an introductory course in linear programming or have been exposed to the subject in an introductory operations research course.

Facility layout and location is an area which offers considerable potential for the application of the analytical approaches of operations research. Students with diverse backgrounds and interests can find a number of interesting facility layout and location problems to be solved in a variety of contexts. A number of applied and theoretical problems remain to be solved.

The subject matter presented in this book has been taught in both a senior-level undergraduate course and a beginning graduate course taken by industrial engineering, systems engineering, and operations research students. A two-course sequence can be taught using this text, supplemented in the second course with selected reference papers from professional journals.

The objectives of this book are

1. To provide the facilities analyst with new techniques, approaches, and philosophies for the solution of facility layout and location problems.

2. To stimulate interest in facility layout and location problems within a wide variety of academic disciplines.

3. To provide an opportunity for a shift in the emphasis on qualitative-quantitative aspects of facility layout and location in college-level instruction on the subject.

4. To provide a classification of the rapidly expanding body of literature on facility layout and location problems and attempt to treat a selected portion of the literature in a unified manner.

The treatment of facility layout and location provided in this book is intentionally different from that found in other facility layout and location texts. We feel that, with the development of new research results in the area, the time has come when it is appropriate to take a more analytical approach to facility layout and location problems in a text than is commonly taken.

Since 1960 over 500 papers have been published in the area of facility layout and location. Since this book is not a survey text, a number of the facilities problems discussed in these papers have necessarily been omitted. In considering the tradeoff between unity of the presentation and breadth of coverage, we chose to provide an in-depth treatment of a small number of related problems.

Depending on the orientation of the course, the subject matter in this text can be covered in a variety of ways. We have found it convenient to cover Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (omitting proofs) in an undergraduate course and Chapters 1, parts of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in a graduate course (including proofs). If only one course is to be taught from the book, we recommend Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and the heuristic procedures in Chapter 8, with Chapter 2 assigned as supplementary reading. In the latter course, the coverage of the proofs would depend upon the backgrounds of the students. To facilitate the selection of appropriate sections, the more advanced material is indicated with footnotes. The designated sections can be omitted without loss of continuity in the presentation.

A large number of persons have contributed to the development of this text. We are deeply indebted to the counsel provided by Dr. David F. Baker of The Ohio State University, to whose memory this book is dedicated. Additionally, the support and encouragement provided by the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the Departments of Industrial and Systems Engineering at both The Ohio State University and the University of Florida are gratefully acknowledged. Dr. P. M. Dearing, Dr. James W. Eyster, Dr. Stephen D Roberts, and Dr. Kerry E. Kilpatrick read early drafts of the manuscript and provided helpful observations. To the many undergraduate and graduate students who assisted us in this effort, a special acknowledgment is given. Our appreciation is also expressed to Dr. Salah E. Elmaghraby for encouraging us to write the manuscript.

Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to the editors of AIIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, and Operations Research for allowing us to include in the text material previously published by us in the indicated journals.

RICHARD L. FRANCIS JOHN A. WHITE