Single-Row Equidistant Facility Layout as a Special Case of Single-Row Facility Layout

In this paper we discuss two particular layout problems, namely the Single-Row Equidistant Facility Layout Problem (SREFLP) and the Single-Row Facility Layout Problem (SRFLP). Our aim is to consolidate the two respective branches in the layout literature. We show that the (SREFLP) is not only a special case of the Quadratic Assignment Problem but also a special case of the (SRFLP). This new connection is relevant as the strongest exact methods for the (SRFLP) outperform the best approaches specialized to the (SREFLP). We describe and compare the exact approaches for the (SRFLP), the (SREFLP) and Linear Arrangement that is again a special case of the (SREFLP). In a computational study we showcase that the strongest exact approach for the (SRFLP) clearly outperforms the strongest exact approach tailored to the (SREFLP) on medium and large benchmark instances from the literature.