Facility layout

Activity relationship analysis

 REL chart
• Flow analysis tends to relate various activities on some
quantitative basis (refer Travel chart).
• Typically, the relationship is expressed as a function of
transport cost or material handling cost.
• There might be other qualitative aspects of layout design that
might be important.
• The activity relationship chart (REL chart) was developed to
facilitate the consideration of qualitative factors – analytically!
• The REL chart replaces the numbers in the Travel chart by a
qualitative closeness rating.

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 REL chart
• All pairs of relationships are evaluated, and a closeness rating
(A, E, I, O, U, and X) is assigned to each pair.
• When evaluating activity relationships for N activities, there
are N(N-1)/2 such evaluations.
• With the exception of U rating, the reason for the assigned
rating is indicated using a numeric code.
• Closeness ratings represent an ordered preference for
“closeness.”
• Specifically, A and X ratings are considered to be most
important ratings.
• Hence, any layout must satisfy A and X ratings.
• Thus, A and X > E > I > O > U , where > means “more
important or higher ranking than.”

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 REL chart

A: Absolutely necessary
E: Especially important
I: Important
O: Ordinary closeness OK
U: Unimportant
X: Undesirable

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 REL chart
• Assignment of the closeness rating is subjective.
Rule of thumb:
• Very few A and X relationships should be assigned. (no more
than 5% of the closeness ratings to be an A and X).
• No more than 10% should be an E.
• No more than 15% to be an I.
• No more than 20% to be an O.

• Which means that about 50% of the relationships should be U.

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 Hierarchical approach
• Block plans, or block layouts are developed first by
determining the sizes, shapes and relative locations of
departments or other designated activities.
• Next, detailed layouts are designed for each department.
• Thus different REL charts are needed for designing block
plans and detailed layouts.
• The process of constructing an activity relationship chart can
be complicated by the presence of multiple relationships that
will influence the design of the layout.

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REL chart example

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 REL chart – REL diagram
• From REL chart, we construct activity relationship diagram
(REL diagram).
• The purpose is to depict spatially the relationships of the
activities.
• The basic premise is that geographic proximity can be used to
satisfy particular relationships.
• For example, when the activity relationships reflect the
magnitudes of material flows, pairs of activities having the
greatest pair wise flow are located next to each other.
• Similarly, pairs of activities having an A rating are located
adjacently.

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Activity relationship diagram

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Activity relationship diagram

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 Graph based process
• Each activity is represented by a circle, node or vertex.
• Activities that must be adjacent are denoted by connecting the
respective nodes or vertices with lines, links or edges.
• The resulting representation of the activities and relationships
is the activity relationship diagram or graph.
• A graph is planar if it can be drawn so that its vertices are
points in the space and each edge can be drawn such that it
intersects no other edges and passes through no other vertices.
• A requirement for the existence of a layout satisfying the
activity relationships depicted in the graph is that the graph be
planar.
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 Graph based process
• Regions defined by a graph are referred to as faces; with the
unbounded outside region is the exterior face.
• Two faces are said to be adjacent if they share a common edge.

• An additional aspect of a graph is its dual.

• To construct the dual of a planar graph, place a dual node in
each face of the primal graph.
• Whenever two faces are adjacent in primal, connect the
corresponding dual nodes by an edge such that it crosses the
edge that divides the primal faces.

• If the REL diagram is a planar graph, its dual graph will be

planar.
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 Graph based process
• It is not a simple matter to establish the planarity of a graph
for a reasonably large layout problem.
• Computer codes do exist for establishing the same though.
• More importantly, upper bound exists on the number of pairs
of adjacent activities.
• If there are N activities, no more than 3N-6 pairs of activities
can be adjacent.
• That is, if the graph of adjacency relationships has more than
3N-6 edges, it cannot be planar.
• However, this is an upper bound. Examples can be constructed
such that non-planarity results with less number of adjacent
activities considered.
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 Graph based process
• If at least half of the relationships are U ratings, then for
planarity to exist, the upper bound places the following
limitations on the number of activities:

0.5 N ( N  1)
3N  6   N  10
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• Hence if more than 10 departments are involved, planarity

will not exist if all A, E, I, and O relationships must be
satisfied via adjacency.

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 Graph based process
• Therefore, for large problems, if adjacency is the basis of
satisfying closeness requirements, it might be that only A, or A
and E, relationships can be satisfied.
• If the distribution of closeness rating is 5% A, 10% E, 15% I,
and 20% O, then as many as 118 departments can be
accommodated if only A relationships must be satisfied via
adjacency.
• However, if A and E relationships are to be satisfied via
adjacency, no more than 38 departments can be
accommodated.
• Similarly, to include A, E, and I relationships, only 18
departments can be fit.

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 Graph based process

In summary,
• The graph based approach provides a structured approach for
developing the REL diagram.
• Graph based approach is widely used in activity-based block
layouts.
• It emphasizes the importance of constructing a planar graph of
the REL chart if the block diagram is to be constructed to
satisfy the relationships.

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 Graph based process
Limitations
• Interpretation of closeness to mean adjacency. This, at times,
results in peculiar shapes of departments to satisfy adjacency
requirements.
• There is no well-defined algorithm to draw a planar graph.
• Planarity requirement is a limitation: Just because a set of
requirements can not be satisfied via a planar graph does not
mean that a block layout cannot be developed. It only means
that it is not possible to satisfy all relationships with
adjacency.

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Relationship diagram process

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 Designing a layout
• After the block layout is ready, estimate is made of the space
requirements.
• This includes space required for machines, equipments,
products.
• Estimation of human resources needed is made based on the
number of machines operated and production rate.
• Then, space relationship diagrams are made.

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Sample: Space relationship table

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Example: Alternate block diagram

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Example: Alternate block diagram

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 Use of computers in layout design
• Many Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) commercial software
packages available.
Examples:
• CRAFT
• CORELAP
• ALDEP
• PLANET
• Originally developed in late 60’s, many of these packages are
still around.. with latest additions to the features!

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 Layout design
• It has to be noted that if the “favorable” factors don’t lend
themselves for quantification, it is very difficult to calculate
the utility of a layout using a computer software.
• How do you measure “flexibility” of a layout against another?

• So some form of quantifiable function is used in most of the

algorithms.

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 Adjacency-based rating
• The layout score is computed as:
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s   wi X i
i 1

where,
Xi is the number of adjacencies in class i, and
wi is the weighting factor for class i.

• Typical weights: A (64), E(16), I(4), O(1), U(0) and X(-1024)

• Larger the score, better is the layout.
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 Distance-based scoring
• The scoring model for m activities:
m 1 m
s c D ij ij
i 1 j i 1

Cij is the cost per unit distance of flow between activities i and
j. (same as i-to-j and j-to-i)
Dij is the distance between activities i and j.

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 Process layout and relative location
problem
• Arrangement by similar processes grouping.
• Can simultaneously handle a wide variety of services.
• Give flexibility in equipment use and in employee assignment.
• Downside: customer has to travel more than in product layout.
e.g. Law offices, banks, amusement parks etc.

• Key to a good layout: arrange departments or service center

depending the flow of customers and travel time between the
pair of departments.
• Pair-wise switching algorithm is one of the methods to solve
this problem.

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 Objective of process layout algorithm
• Objective function
k k
Min  N ij Dij ,
i 1 j 1

where
N ij : # of customers moving from station i to j
Dij : Distance of station i from j
k : Total number of stations in the facility

• Instead of distance, it could be time taken or cost of

movement.

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Example: pair-wise switching algorithm

Transportation cost of Re. 1 for adjacent departments and

Cost of Rs. 2 for nonadjacent departments
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 Pair-wise switching algorithm
• Cost of the default layout =
50+2*100+2*20+30+50+10+2*20+100+50 = Rs. 570

• Cost of new layout = 50+100+20+2*30+50+10+2*20+100+50

= Rs. 480

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