Question: Consider the initial layout for Example, which appears in Figure 11-11. Draw a figure showing the layout obtained from exchanging the locations of A and D, and find the centroids of A and D in the new layout.
Example: A local manufacturing firm has recently completed construction of a new wing of an existing building to house four departments: A, B, C, and D. The wing is 100 feet by 50 feet. The plant manager has chosen an initial layout of the four departments. This layout appears in Figure 11-11. We have marked the centroid locations of the departments with a dot. From the figure we see that department A requires 1,800 square feet, B requires 1,200 square feet, C requires 800 square feet, and D requires 1,200 square feet.
One of the inputs required by CRAFT is the flow data, that is, the number of materials handling trips per unit time from every department to every other department. These data are given in the from-to chart appearing in Figure 11-12
a. The distance between departments is assumed to be the rectilinear distance between centroid locations. From Figure 11-11, we see that the centroid locations of the initial layout are
One computes distances between other pairs of departments in a similar way. The calculations are summarized in the from-to chart in Figure 11-12
b. Notice that we have assumed that the distance from department i to department j is the same as the distance from department j to department i. As we noted earlier, this may not necessarily be true if material is transported in one direction only
