In this paper an effort is made to present a state-of-the-art review of meta-heuristic approaches in solving facility layout problems. Facility layout directly affects the productivity of the industries so it is very important to solve it carefully. There are many approaches, methods and techniques to solve and optimize the layout problem. The current and future trends involving design objectiv...

In this paper, to cope with the stochastic dynamic (or multi-period) problem, two new quadratic assignment-based mathematical models corresponding to the dynamic and static approaches are developed. The product demands are presumed to be dependent uncertain variables with normal distribution having known expectation, variance, and covariance that change from one period to the next one, randomly...

Layout problems are found in several types of manufacturing systems. Typically, layout problems are related to the location of facilities (e.g., machines, departments) in a plant. They are known to greatly impact the system performance. Most of these problems are NP hard. Numerous research works related to facility layout have been published. A few literature reviews exist, but they are not rec...

Facility layout selection is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem which primarily involves in evaluating multiple candidate layouts, designed according to a set of common criteria for choosing the best one. Designing multiple facility layouts is an easy task, thank to availability of different facility layout design software. However, the decision of selecting the best layout becomes...

Facility layout is one of the most important Operations Management problems due to its direct impact on the financial performance of both private and public firms. Facility layout problem (FLP) with stochastic parameters, unequal area facilities, and grid system modeling is named GSUA-STFLP. This problem has not been worked in the literature so that to solve GSUA-STFLP is our main contribution....

Traditionally, the objective of a service facility layout problem is to minimize the material handling cost and optimize the physical spaces that support a productive activity of the service system. Service delivering interface has direct impact to the efficiency and effectiveness of service system in light of customer’s contact. Layout problem of service facilities has received little attentio...

Facility layout has considerable effects on the operational productivity and efficiency of a facility because of its direct effect on material handling costs. The objective of this study is to propose newweighted association rule-based data mining approaches for facility layout problem. Classic association rule-based approaches assume that each item has the same level of significance. On the ot...

This paper addresses optimization of multi-objective facility layout problem. Facility layout plays a key role for companies, and it is an inseparable part of the manufacturing system design process. Traditionally there are two approaches to the facility layout problem. One is the quantitative approach aiming at minimizing the total material handling cost and another is qualitative approach aim...

Flexible manufacturing Systems are automated manufacturing systems which have job shop flexibility and flow shop efficiency. One of the major concerns in Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is the minimization of the total flow of material through the system. Facility layout design deals with the arrangement of machines, in order to minimise the total flow of parts in the system. The commonly u...