ABSTRACT

Facilities Design and Planning can be broadly defined as the art and science of building facilities—buildings where people use material, machines, and other resources to produce a product or deliver a service. This chapter discusses four important topics in facilities layout. The types of layouts seen in manufacturing and service facilities can be classified as: product, process, group-technology, fixed position, and hybrid layouts. The chapter summarizes the various trends, challenges, and capabilities contained in that publication. It discusses the specific capabilities that will be required of the materials handling and logistics industry by 2025. The chapter discusses future research areas relative to warehouse design and operations. Following the models presented in Francis and White, Gue and Meller propose fishbone-like, warehouse aisle designs that also have been implemented in warehouses with random storage policy and human order-pickers. A flow process chart is a visual display of the various operations a product undergoes in a facility.