Facilities Planning and Design – Pearson New International Edition

The Problem This Book Solves

Designing or redesigning a facility — whether a factory floor, warehouse, or service center — is a high-stakes operation. Poor layout decisions lead to wasted floor space, bottlenecks in material flow, and millions in lost productivity. Without a structured, analytical approach, facilities planning becomes guesswork.

Facilities Planning and Design provides the systematic framework engineers and managers need to eliminate those risks. It replaces intuition with quantitative methods, ensuring every square foot and every material-handling dollar is optimized for maximum throughput.

What Is Facilities Planning and Design? A Complete Overview

Facilities Planning and Design is a comprehensive textbook by Alberto Garcia-Diaz and J. MacGregor Smith that presents a modern, unified body of knowledge for the field of facilities planning. This Pearson New International Edition (2014) covers the entire lifecycle of facility design — from fundamental principles to advanced mathematical models.

The book integrates factory layout, material handling, and logistics into a single coherent methodology. It emphasizes both the strategic importance of facility location decisions and the tactical details of workstation arrangement, making it equally valuable for upper-division undergraduate students and practicing professionals.

Who Should Read Facilities Planning and Design?

This text is tailored for a specific audience — those who need to make data-driven decisions about physical space and material flow.

• Industrial engineering students — upper-division undergraduates or graduate students seeking a rigorous, quantitative grounding in facilities planning
• Manufacturing engineers — professionals responsible for layout design, material handling system selection, or factory expansion projects
• Supply chain and logistics managers — decision-makers who need to optimize warehouse layouts and distribution center operations
• Operations consultants — practitioners who advise clients on plant layout, process flow improvement, and capacity planning
• Facility planners in service industries — hospital planners, airport designers, and office-space strategists who can adapt the core principles to non-manufacturing contexts

6 Key Things You Will Learn

This book equips you with a complete toolkit for solving real-world facility problems. Here is what you will master:

• Fundamental principles of facilities planning — the core concepts of space determination, activity relationships, and flow analysis that underpin every layout decision
• Factory layout design methods — systematic techniques such as SLP (Systematic Layout Planning) and computerized layout algorithms like CRAFT and BLOCPLAN
• Material handling system analysis — how to select, size, and configure conveyors, AGVs, forklifts, and storage systems based on unit-load and flow data
• Mathematical optimization models — quantitative approaches including linear programming, network flow models, and queuing theory applied to facility location and layout
• Warehouse and distribution center design — specialized strategies for order-picking systems, storage configurations, and dock layout
• Project implementation and evaluation — economic analysis, simulation, and post-occupancy evaluation to ensure designs deliver promised results

Why Facilities Planning and Design Outperforms Every Alternative

Most facilities planning books fall into one of two camps: overly theoretical texts that lack practical tools, or superficial guides that ignore the math. Garcia-Diaz and Smith strike a rare balance.

Unlike the popular Facilities Planning by Tompkins et al., this book provides deeper coverage of network-flow models and queuing applications for material handling. Its unified treatment of layout and logistics means you don’t need to cross-reference multiple sources to build a complete solution.

The Pearson New International Edition also updates key examples and problem sets, ensuring relevance to contemporary manufacturing and warehousing environments. For students, the clear progression from theory to algorithm to application makes complex material accessible without sacrificing rigor.

Author Authority & Publisher Credibility

Alberto Garcia-Diaz is a Distinguished Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso, with decades of research in facilities design and logistics optimization. J. MacGregor Smith was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, known for his pioneering work in facility layout algorithms and network optimization.

Published by Pearson Education Limited — one of the world’s leading academic publishers — this New International Edition reflects the authors’ commitment to providing a current, globally relevant text. The credibility of both authors and publisher ensures the content meets the highest academic and professional standards.

Is Facilities Planning and Design Worth It? Our Verdict

For any engineer, student, or manager who needs to make informed decisions about facility layout and material flow, this book is an essential investment. Its unique combination of fundamental theory and computational methods gives you the tools to solve problems that cheaper, simpler texts cannot address.

The 2014 edition remains fully relevant because the core analytical methods — network models, queuing theory, and layout algorithms — are timeless. You are not buying a book that will be outdated next year; you are buying a reference you will consult throughout your career.

Compared to the cost of a single facility planning mistake — a poorly placed workstation or an undersized warehouse aisle — the price of this ebook is negligible. It pays for itself with the first layout improvement you implement.

Get Facilities Planning and Design — Master Facility Layout and Material Handling Today

Whether you are preparing for a career in industrial engineering or solving real-world layout challenges right now, this Pearson New International Edition delivers the complete toolkit you need. Stop guessing and start optimizing.

Add to cart now to gain instant access to the definitive guide on facilities planning and design — from two of the field’s most respected authorities.