An activity relationship chart (ARC) is a
tabular means of displaying the
closeness rating among all pairs of activities or departments.
In an ARC there are six closeness ratings which may be assigned to each pair of departments, as well as nine reasons for those ratings (each is assigned by a reason code).
Rating symbols
#A: Absolutely necessary
#E: Especially important
#I: Important and core
#O: Ordinary
#U: Unimportant
#X: Prohibited or Undesirable
Reason codes
#Same table
#Flow of material
#Service
#Convenience
#
Inventory control
#Communication
#Same personnel
#
Cleanliness
Cleanliness is both the state of being clean and free from Germ (microorganism), germs, dirt, Trash (garbage), trash, or waste, and the habit of achieving and maintaining that state. Cleanliness is often achieved through cleaning. Culturally, cl ...
#Flow of parts
A
rule of thumb
In English language, English, the phrase ''rule of thumb'' refers to an approximate method for doing something, based on practical experience rather than theory. This usage of the phrase can be traced back to the 17th century and has been associat ...
is used to restrict the choice of rating letters:
*Very few ''A'' and ''X'' relationships (no more than five percent) should be assigned
*No more than 10 percent should be ''E''
*No more than 15 percent should be ''I''
*No more than 20 percent should be ''O''
*About 50 percent of the relationships should be ''U''
Developing an ARC
#List all the departments within the facility, and draw a rectangle around each one.
#Draw a
rhombus
In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (: rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The rhom ...
between each department, until you fully construct the rhombus as a tree.
#Divide each rhombus into two halves; the upper half will contain the rating letter, while the lower half will contain the rating-reason code.
See also
*
distance matrix
*
correlation matrix
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
References
{{Reflist, refs=
[Groover, M. P. (2007). ''Work Systems: The Methods, Measurement & Management of Work'', Prentice Hall, {{ISBN, 978-0-13-140650-6]
[Tompkins, J. A., White, J. A., Bozer, Y. A. (2010). ''Facilities Planning'', Wiley, {{ISBN, 978-0-470-44404-7]
Industrial engineering