"This new text strikes an interesting and successful balance between quantitative modeling of facilities design and practical discussion of "real-world" facilities design, material handling, and warehousing problems. "--BOOK JACKET. "Distinguishing this book is its excellent treatment (in Chapter 7) of modern, general-purpose solution techniques, including simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and tabu search; its up-to-date presentation of group technology and cellular manufacturing systems; and its in-depth coverage of facilities location (in Chapters 13 and 14). Many chapters also include detailed case studies. The case studies in Chapter 11 and 12, for example, describe material handling and automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) systems in action, with copious illustrations of modern systems at work. A bound-in disk includes a Fortran computer program for two types of ABSMODELS (models M3 and M4 in Chapter 5), as well as BLOCPLAN software for demonstrating layout problem-solving concepts and problems. "--BOOK JACKET.