We de ̄ne a new model for adjacency subgraph selection for the facility layout problem based on proximity and present some heuristics for its solution. The new model presents a more realistic representation of the problem than previous ones in that departments which are nonadjacent yet \close" to each other are compensated in the determination of the optimal adjacency subgraph. Empirical results...

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...

In this paper, a method called an enhanced local search (ELS) is described. ELS is a general framework endowed with a number of local search algorithms intended for providing a better performance for a wide range of problem instances. Thus, ELS is expected to perform well regardless of the particular instances of the problem to be solved. Computational tests show that ELS can be very efficient ...

We present branch-and-bound algorithms for nding a maximum planar subgraph of a nonplanar graph. The problem has important applications in circuit layout, automated graph drawing, and facility layout. The algorithms described utilize heuristics to obtain an initial lower bound for the size of a maximum planar subgraph, then apply a sequence of fast preliminary tests for planarity to eliminate i...

According to [1], the material handling cost comprises about 20-50% of the total operating cost of the facility layout. Typical research on facility layout concentrate on static layout problems where from-to charts are used to evaluate the layout. These layouts are not flexible enough to accommodate any future changes in production. Research on dynamic facility layout also has used the concept ...

The unequal area facility layout problem (UA-FLP) refers to the reasonable arrangement of a certain number facilities in given area. should satisfy constraints and optimize optimization objectives as far possible. In this paper, method combining improved lowest horizontal line particle swarm algorithm is proposed solve UA-FLP, which achieves multi-objective material handling cost, adjacent valu...