In an assembly plant, material handling between departments is performed using a unidirectional closed-loop conveyor. The figure below shows the layout for the modular facility, which consists of three equal-sized assembly modules (A, B, and C), one administrative module (D), and one warehouse module (E). P/D points for each module are also shown in the figure. The administrative and warehouse activities are not to be moved; however, assembly areas A, B, C can be relocated. The distance between P/D points and the number of pallet loads moved between departments are given below.

Using the pairwise exchange method, determine new locations for assembly modules A, B, and C that minimize the sum of the products of pallet flows and conveyor travel distances.

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A B Warehouse module P/D#3 P/D#2 * Conveyor flow P/D#1 P/D#4 P/D#5 D E