CAPTURING THE DYNAMICS OF FACILITY ALLOCATION

States that determining the configuration of a company's facilities ha s become a complex issue in today's globalizing business environment. Existing allocation models often fail to address developments over tim e and ''soft'' issues. Therefore, an existing design method to support decision making on strategic allocation issues was extended with a sy stem dynamics component. This extension allows decision makers to capt ure the inherent dynamics of allocation decisions. In addition, it bec omes possible to incorporate ''soft'' variables in predominantly quant itative models. Applies the extended design method in a case study inv olving a relocation problem of a mid-sized company in the Dutch metal working industry. Demonstrates the value of this method in terms of ma nagerial decision support, not only for this specific problem, but als o for future strategic allocation issues.