Development of decision support system for designing the layout of grain storage warehouse

A decision support system (DSS) was developed for designing the layout of grain storage warehouses by considering the requirements of engineers, students, academicians, and grain storage agencies. A computer programme was written using the integrated development environment (IDE) of Visual Basic 6.0 programming. Expertise and knowledge base required for designing the layout was established by conducting a survey of commercial food grain warehouses in the state of Haryana. Algorithm for layout design was developed based on the specifcations of surveyed warehouses and guidelines given in IS 607 and IS 16, 144. Graphic user interface (GUI) of decision support system was designed for accepting input felds from the users, and to generate the specifcations along with the layout plan of warehouse. Output specifcations generated by computer programme were validated against the surveyed and standard specifcations.