Plant layout design is related to the location of facilities (e.g. machines, departments) in a plant. They are known to greatly impact the system performance. Numerous research works related to facility layout have been published. A few literature reviews exist, but they are not recent or are restricted to certain specific aspects of these layout design. The literature analysis given here is re...

— Facilities layout is a systematic and functional arrangement of different departments, machines, equipments and services in a manufacturing establishment. It is vitally important to have a well developed plant layout for all the available resources in an optimum manner and get the maximum out of the capacity of the facilities. The problem is of particular importance for Small and Medium Enter...

Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is logic based combinatorial optimization problem. It is a meta-heuristic solution approach that gained significant attention to obtained optimal facility layout. This paper examines the convergence analysis by changing the crossover and mutation probability in an optimal facility layout. This algorithm is based on appropriate techniques that include multipoint swa...

The unequal area facility design problem has been studied in the literature generally by considering block layout separate from detailed design. This paper shows a tractable method for concurrently optimizing department shape and location within the facility, and selection of the appropriate number of input/output (I/O) stations per department and then optimally locating them. The distance metr...

This paper presents an integrated design approach for the facility layout problem. It develops a method for the concurrent determination of the block layout, the locations of departmental input and output (I/O) points using the contour distances between the I/O points, and the material flow paths between the I/O points. Results of computational experiments show that the performance of this inte...

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...

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 ...

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....

This article provides a case study for a fire extinguisher manufacturing company in North America that has been building a new facility in Mexico to benefit from North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and low production cost. The company utilized a value stream mapping to finalize its new facility’s manufacturing process design, and divided the process into several groups, some of which wer...