Facilities Design and Layout

A continuing research interest throughout my career has been the design and layout of facilities.  To facilitate the comparison of layout design algorithms I have collected a number of cases from the literature. 

If you use any of these cases in your research, reports, or articles, you must use the same naming conventions as explained below and include a reference to this web site (www.isye.gatech.edu\people\marc.goetschalckx.html).

Block or Conceptual Layout

All the files related to a particular case are archived into a single zip file.  For each case there two text files describing the overall layout parameters (.dat) and the relationships and locations of the departments (.dep).  There is a figure showing the layout in PNG format (.png).  Finally, there is a file compatible with the Spiral facilities design program (.spiral).

The name of the zip archive typically has first the name of the author or case, immediately followed by the number of departments in the case.  Next follows an underscore and then the common maximum aspect ratio of the departments.

Furniture

A layout case with 10 departments.  The case includes negative relationships between departments to indicate incompatibilities.  The problem was initially published in Facilities Design (1974) by Francis and White and relationships with the outside were added in Goetschalckx (1992).

Furniture_20.zip with a common shape ratio of 2.0

Furniture_25.zip with a common shape ratio of 2.5

Furniture_30.zip with a common shape ratio of 3.0