A Group Decision Model for Selecting Facility Layout Alternatives

Facility layout problems (FLP) are usually treated as design problems. Lack of systematic and objective tools to compare design alternatives results in decision-making to be dominated by the experiences or preferences of designers or managers. To increase objectivity and effectiveness of decision-making in facility layout selections, a decision support model is necessary. We proposed a decision model, which regards the FLP as a multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problem. We identify sets of attributes crucial to layout selections, quantitative indices for attributes, and methods of ranking alternatives. For a requested facility layout design, many alternatives could be developed. The enormous alternatives, various attributes, and comparison of assigned qualitative values to each attribute, form a complicated decision problem. To treat facility layout selection problems as a MADM problem, we used the linear assignment method to rank before selecting those high ranks as candidates. We modelled the application of the Nemawashi process to simulate the group decision-making procedure and help efficiently achieve agreement. The electronics manufacturing service (EMS) industry has frequent and costly facility layout modifications. Our models are helpful to them. We use an electronics manufacturing service company to illustrate the decision-making process of our models.