Semiconductor manufacturing is an important component of the U.S. manufacturing industry. Most of today’s fabrication facilities and those being designed for the near future use a bay layout configuration and an overhead monorail system for moving material between bays. These material handling systems are usually designed with a spine or perimeter type of configuration. This paper investigates ...

Much of the research in facility layout has focused on static layouts where the material handling flow is assumed to be constant during the planning horizon. But in today’s market-based, dynamic environment, layout rearrangement may be required during the planning horizon to maintain layout effectiveness. A few algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem. They include dynamic programmin...

In this paper we propose a new approach for the facility layout problem (FLP) and suggest new mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations. The proposed approach considers simultaneously the location of the departments within the facility and the internal arrangement of the machines. Two models are suggested, where the first addresses the rectangular department case and the second allow...

This paper presents a novel approach to the facility layout design problem based on multi-agent society where agents’ interactions form the facility layout design. Each agent corresponds to a facility with inherent characteristics, emotions, and a certain amount of money, forming its utility function. An agent’s money is adjusted during the learning period by a manager agent while each agent tr...

Reducing manufacturing lead times and minimizing work-in-process (WIP) inventories are the cornerstones of popular manufacturing strategies such as Lean, Quick Response, and Just-inTime Manufacturing. In this paper, we present a model that captures the relationship between facility layout and congestion-related measures of performance. We use the model to introduce a formulation of the facility...

This paper presents an extended formulation of the unequal area facilities block layout problem which explicitly considers uncertainty in material handling costs by use of expected value and standard deviations of product forecasts. This formulation is solved using a random keys genetic algorithm (RKGA) heuristic with a flexible bay construct of the departments and total facility area. It is sh...

This paper presents an investigation of the applicability of a genetic approach for solving the construction site layout problem. This problem involves coordinating the use of limited site space to accommodate temporary facilities so that transportation cost of materials is minimized. The layout problem considered in this paper is characterized by affinity weights used to model transportation c...