Question

Donald Rice sold the building that housed the restaurant/lounge he owned and operated for the last 10 years and has recently purchased a larger building in a new location. Mr. Rice hopes to operate a new restaurant and expand his growing business. The building has four equal size rooms. Donald’s restaurant consists of four major departments (areas of his operation):

1.        Dining area

2.         Lounge/Bar

3.        Kitchen

4.        Storage/Refrigeration/Loading area

Donald envisioned using the four rooms to occupy four areas of his operation. The distance matrix among the four rooms is as follows (all distance values are given in feet):

Distance Matrix

Room	1	2	3	4
1	–	25	45	35
2		–	60	20
3			–	10
4				–

Based on his experience from his previous restaurant, he estimated the following number of trips per hour between departments:

Load Matrix

	Dining	Lounge	Kitchen	Storage
Dining		60	80	10
Lounge			40	20
Kitchen				100
Storage

a.        Donald is thinking about using the following departmental layout.

Room 1	Room 2	Room 3	Room 4
Dining	Kitchen	Lounge	Storage

            Determine the (distance x trip) matrix for the above layout. What is the total distance?

b.         Determine a layout and the associated trip x distance matrix that will result in a lower total distance (Hint: Locate the departments that have high traffic close to each other).

Answer 1

a) distance x trip is calculated as SUMPRODUCT of distance and load

Total distance = Number of trips between Dining and Kitchen x Distance between Dining and Kitchen

+ Number of trips between Dining and Lounge x Distance between Dining and Lounge

+ Number of trips between Dining and Storage x Distance between Dining and Storage

+ Number of trips between Kitchen and Lounge x Distance between Kitchen and Lounge

+ Number of trips between Kitchen and Storage x Distance between Kitchen and Storage

+ Number of trips between Lounge and Storage x Distance between Lounge and Storage

= 25*80 + 45*60 + 35*10 + 60*40 + 20*100 + 10*20 = 9650

b) Locate the departments having high traffic close to each other. Therefore, Kitchen should be located close to Storage and Dining and Dining should be located close to Lounge.

Resulting improved layout is following

Total distance =