設施規劃之績效與工廠產能之間具有高度關聯性。設施規劃即是將空間中所存在之各項設施進行佈置，以期達到有效之生產佈置方式。在實務當中，彈性製造系統設施佈置相當常見，在許多設施規劃相關之文獻中，大部分研究皆針對線性佈置與開放式或是單一迴圈佈置進行研究，相較之下，過去在梯式佈置之相關研究並不豐富，但梯式佈置之彈性較線性佈置或單一封閉迴圈佈置為佳，同時也較開放式佈置形式易於規劃，因此本研究希望針對梯式佈置建立一套系統化之設計方式，以期有效利用此佈置形式之優勢，達到更有效率之設施佈置規劃。
本研究主要目的是在彈性製造系統環境下，尋找一套方法能夠有效設計出完整的階梯式佈置，以此為方向，吾人參考了許多相似環境的設施設計方式，但尚未發現文獻中有任何一篇提及物料路徑方向限制的階梯式佈置方法，故本研究以單向物料路徑為限制提出一套階梯式設施佈置設計方法。
本研究流程方法可分為四個階段：（1）流量分線法：依循流線分析法（FLA；flow line analysis）找出設施之間之流量關係而決定機器相對位置；（2）建立梯式佈置：根據流量分析法找出的設施之間的關係，建立梯式佈置；（3）數學模式：以數學模式調整各個階層設施的位置，使設施之佈置在最佳位置上，並且符合環境條件之限制；（4）模擬退火法：以模擬退火法改善初始解，確保改善解的品質。本研究將用流量分析法進行實驗，並將實驗結果與相關文獻的結果進行比較。

In the past, most of the research in facility layout was focus on the closed-loop layout and linear layout. There was few study focus on “ladder layout,” even it is also one of the popular layout types in flexible manufacturing system. Therefore, a systematical procedure of building up the unidirectional ladder layout is proposed in this study.
This paper addresses the facility layout procedure of multiple-floor with unidirectional flow path in the flexible manufacturing system. In the first stage, the Flow Line Analysis method is used to find out the best result of machine flow path. In the second stage, change the machine flow path becomes a snake-shaped flow line layout. Consider the achievable for each machine, fill in the indentation of snake-shaped flow line. Then, a mathematic model is proposed to adjust the final I/O point location of each machine in its ladder level. Finally, Tabu search is introduced to improve the initial solution. The four stage procedure are experimented to show its performance.

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