Original papers Facility planning for large equine facilities in urban and rural settings Aimee Glenn, Hector A. Vergara ⇑ School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, 204 Rogers Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA article info Article history: Received 25 January 2016 Received in revised form 29 September 2016 Accepted 1 November 2016 Keywords: Equine facilities Facility layout Algorithm Optimization abstract 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 devel- oped, 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. Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the United States, there exists a large population of horse owners who can be categorized into two groups: those who own horses in urban areas and those who own horses in rural areas. Urban horse owners often rent spaces at designated equine board- ing facilities to house their horses while rural horse owners, who may also raise horses as part of their livelihood, will generally house their horses on their own property and own a substantial amount of land to accommodate and support their business. Both types of facilities require areas for feed storage, grazing pastures, storage and removal of waste, appropriate spaces for the grooming, washing, exercising, and training of the horses, storage for the equipment associated with the previously mentioned activities, and space for trailer storage. The placement of these important components within the facilities is often illogical from an efficiency and material handling standpoint due to the natural slow growth of these facilities and the prioritization of the needs of the animals above of the needs of their handlers. Cleaning stalls and feeding horses are two mandatory, daily tasks that can take an entire eight-hour work day to complete. The majority of those eight hours are often spent handling and moving materials and livestock while the actual cleaning and feeding take very little time to complete. The purpose of this research was to identify a general analytical methodology to develop efficient facility layout plans for large equine facilities, defined as any equine facility housing at least 25 horses, which can be applied to existing and future facilities within urban and rural settings. We developed a general method- ology based on facility planning theory to improve existing layouts of large equine facilities focusing on maximizing the efficiency of daily operations. This methodology was applied to two different test cases corresponding to existing facilities located in the Wil- lamette Valley (a small urban setting) and on the Umatilla Indian Reservation (a rural setting) in Oregon in the U.S. For the purposes of this study, the urban case is defined by having a limited amount of space while the rural case has vastly more property to work with. This research contributes to the literature by providing a facility planning resource to equine facility owners. It also considers differ- ences within urban and rural settings which affect equine facility layouts, and provides a simple and economic method to assist in the reduction of distance traveled on a daily basis by facility per- sonnel. Finally, it opens the door for the application of traditional industrial engineering principles to other types of livestock facilities. The remainder of this document is organized as follows. Sec- tion 2 presents a literature review of relevant facility planning and layout theory applied in this area. Section 3 describes the steps of the developed method along with the necessary inputs for its application. Section 4 presents the results of the two test cases http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2016.11.002 0168-1699/Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: glenna@oregonstate.edu (A. Glenn), hector.vergara@ oregonstate.edu (H.A. Vergara). Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 130 (2016) 151–157 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers and Electronics in Agriculture journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag