Title: Facility layout for flexible manufacturing system using genetic algorithm

Authors: Kamal Deep

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Guru Jambeshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar – 125 001 (HR), India

Abstract: This paper focuses the allocation of facilities into flexible manufacturing system deals in single and multi-row layout with equal and/or unequal area of facilities. The proposed mathematical model offers the effective utilisation of facilities with minimum throughput time and material handling subjected to production-derived constraints. The facility layout design is a combinatorial problem generates alternative feasible solution with the help of available computer software. However, selection of the best alternative solution from the available set of feasible alternatives is crucial in consideration of the distance between the facilities and the adjacency requirement of facility types for a given production layout. A genetic algorithm based solution approach is used to elicit the optimal rectilinear distance among different workstations in a realistic way minimises the total material handling costs. The modest genetic operators are embedded with the emendation operation enables the mapping of optimal results with the benchmark instances reported in the literature. The results obtained using the genetic algorithm are found better than the previous best known results.

Keywords: facility layout; quadratic assignment problem; QAP; flexible manufacturing system; combinatorial optimisation; material flow; genetic algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPMB.2025.143601

International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking, 2025 Vol.19 No.1, pp.89 - 107

Received: 26 Dec 2022
Accepted: 28 Dec 2022
Published online: 02 Jan 2025 *

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