Integrating data envelopment analysis and analytic hierarchy for the facility layout design in manufacturing systems

Facility Layout Design (FLD) has a very important effect on the performance of a manufacturing system. The concept of FLD is usually considered as a multi-objective problem. This paper presents a decision-making methodology based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which uses both quantitative and qualitative criteria, for evaluating FLD. The criteria that are to be minimized are viewed as inputs whereas the criteria to be maximized are considered as outputs. A computer-aided layout-planning tool, VisFactory, is adopted to facilitate the layout alternative design process as well as to collect quantitative data by using exact and vague data by means of fuzzy set theory. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is then applied to collect qualitative data related to quality and flexibility. The DEA methodology is used to solve the layout design problem by simultaneously considering both the quantitative and qualitative data. The purposed integrated procedure is applied to a real data set consisting of nineteen FLDs provided of the plastic profile production system.