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
Inventory control or stock control can be broadly defined as "the activity of checking a shop's stock". It is the process of ensuring that the right amount of supply is available within a business. However, a more focused definition takes into acco ...
#Communication
#Same personnel
#
Cleanliness
Cleanliness is both the state of being clean and free from germs, dirt, trash, or waste, and the habit of achieving and maintaining that state. Cleanliness is often achieved through cleaning. Culturally, cleanliness is usually a good quality, ...
#Flow of parts
A
rule of thumb 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 (plural 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. Th ...
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
In mathematics, computer science and especially graph theory, a distance matrix is a square matrix
In mathematics, a square matrix is a matrix with the same number of rows and columns. An ''n''-by-''n'' matrix is known as a square matrix of orde ...
*
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 statistic ...
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