This paper presents a formulation for the plant layout problem, incorporating more than two input factors that may be either qualitative or quantitative in nature. A heuristic is presented which combines a construction and improvement procedure to quickly develop a good layout from the formulation. The output layout from the heuristic may be used directly as the final layout or it may be used as a good starting layout for any other computerized layout improvement procedure. The heuristic is illustrated with a practical example of a large plant with 36 departments.