Increasing global competition, rapid changes in technology and the necessit
y to respond quickly to a cost and quality conscious customer have changed
the dynamics of facilities planning. Today's manufacturing facility needs t
o be responsive to the frequent changes in product mix and demand while min
imizing material handling and machine relocation costs. In this paper, we p
resent a framework for the design of a dynamic facility which can respond e
ffectively to the changes in product design, mix and volume in a continuous
ly evolving work environment. A genetic algorithm-based heuristic is used f
or solving the design problem and two test cases are presented to illustrat
e the use of the methodology.