ABSTRACT
Facilities Design and Planning can be broadly defined as the art and science of building facilities—buildings where people use material, machines, and other resources to produce a product or deliver a service (Heragu 2016). An air-conditioner manufacturer must order the required amount of raw materials and sub-assemblies, provide the required fabrication and assembly equipment, as well as plan and organize the various manufacturing steps so that the desired number of air-conditioners can be manufactured to meet the customer demand. A warehouse, on the other hand, does not manufacture any product, but uses people and/or equipment to both store incoming pallets and retrieve them as needed, based on specific customer orders (see Figure 8.1). Proper design, planning, and operation of facilities allow companies to meet customer demand quickly using a minimum amount of resources and at minimum cost.
