Automotive assembly plants are unique from otherindustrial facilities in that they combine highoutput volume with high part counts (over 4,000 pervehicle) and high variety in a product flow layoutinvolving a large quantity of fixed positionmaterial handling equipment. While assembly plantsshare common factory layout issues such as, dockplacement, storage placement, transport batch sizesand aisle design, it is the high material flowvolumes of large and heavy products coupled with theless layout flexibility, due to fixed equipment,that make automotive assembly plants uniquely suitedfor the evaluation and benchmarking metrics proposedin this dissertation.This dissertation proposes new metrics capable ofevaluating and comparing automotive assembly plantdesigns based on the efficiency of each plant'saisle design, dock placement and intensityallocation. These performance metrics are generatedfrom readily available information and are evaluatedagainst hypothetical "best case" and "worst case"scenarios. These metrics have been developed for useby practitioners to design and benchmark automotiveassembly plants.