Facility planning for large equine facilities in urban and rural settings

Large equine facilities are comprised of many different areas that are necessary for the proper care and training of horses. The placement of areas is often inefficient due to the slow growth of equine facilities. As a result, facility layout becomes a crucial aspect requiring explicit consideration. The purpose of this study was to develop an analytical method which can be applied to large equine facilities within different settings to produce efficient layouts that are simple and economic to implement. This research developed, implemented, and tested an optimization algorithm that can be applied to the equine facility layout problem to minimize the distance traveled by facility personnel performing daily operations and reduce the total distance traveled for mandatory tasks. The proposed algorithm was applied to two test cases based on equine facilities located in the Willamette Valley and on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon in the U.S., improving their initial layouts by 7% and 6%, respectively. Material flows and distances vary greatly between these cases, yet the algorithm proved effective on both.