Facility Layout Planning

The weighted maximal planar graph (WMPG) appears in many applications. It is currently used to design facilities layout in manufacturing plants. Given an edge-weighted complete simple graph G, the WMPG involves finding a sub-graph of G that is planar in the sense that it could be embedded on the plane such that none of its edges intersect, and is maximal in the sense that no more edges can be added to it unless its planarity is violated. Finally, it is optimal in the sense that the resulting maximal planar graph holds the maximum sum of edge weights. In this chapter, the aim is to explain the application of planarity in facility layout design. The mathematical models and the algorithms developed for the problem so far are explained. In the meanwhile, the corollaries and theorems needed to explain the algorithms and models are briefly given. In the last part, an explanation on how to draw block layout from the adjacency graph is given.