Title: A new heuristic approach for solving facility layout problem

Authors: Rajesh Matai; Surya Prakash Singh; Murari Lal Mittal

Addresses: 1201-G, Management Department, FD-I, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani (Rajasthan), 333031, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Vishwakarma Bhawan, New Delhi, 110016, India ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, J.L.N Marg Jaipur, 302017, India

Abstract: This paper proposes a new heuristic approach for solving facility layout problem (FLP) which is traditionally formulated as quadratic assignment problem (QAP). In this paper, FLP is formulated as linear assignment problem (LAP) consisting of facility pair and location pair. Being linear in nature LAP can be solved efficiently. Solution of LAP provides lower bound on corresponding QAP formulation of FLP. Heuristic procedure is applied to solve FLP from sets of LAP solution. Proposed heuristic is tested on benchmark instances taken from literature and compared with other heuristics available in literature. Computational results show that proposed heuristic provides a good quality approximate solution. This solution can be taken as initial solution for any improvement heuristic to get optimal/near optimal solution for FLP.

Keywords: facility layout problem; FLP; quadratic assignment problem; QAP; heuristics; linear assignment problem; LAP; optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2013.053534

International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2013 Vol.5 No.2, pp.137 - 158

Published online: 28 Apr 2014 *

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