BUILD-IT is a planning tool based on intuitive computer vision technology, supporting complex planning and configuration tasks. Based on real, tangible bricks as an interaction medium, it represents a new approach to Human Computer Interaction (HCI). It allows a group of people, seated around a table, to move virtual objects using a real brick as a interaction handler. Object manipulation and i...

Eswar Sivaraman School of Industrial Engineering and Management Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK ABSTRACT This report details a new heuristic algorithm for solving quadratic assignment problems that arise in plant layout and relative location of activities/facilities. Programmed implementations of the algorithm solve very large problems in a negligible amount of time, results for which...

With increasing production costs and constraints, demand has increased for manufacturers to minimize maintenance cost and product transport time. We address some aspects of this problem by examining how to choose the optimal layout of stations (machines or buffers) in a production facility based on how the station layout affects the maintenance and product transport times. Specifically, we cons...

In this paper we have proposed a semiheuristic optimization algorithm for designing optimal plant layouts in process-focused manufacturing/service facilities. Our proposed algorithm marries the wellknown CRAFT (Computerized Relative Allocation of Facilities Technique) with the Hungarian assignment algorithm. Being a semi-heuristic search, our algorithm is likely to be more efficient in terms of...

In this paper, a number of symmetry-breaking (SB) constraints are considered to improve the performance and decrease computational effort needed in the solution of Process Plant Layout (PPL) Problems. The PPL problems are formulated as mixed-integer linear (MILP) models. In order to determine the efficiency of the symmetry-breaking formulations, test runs are carried out on three different prob...

The layout design problem is a strategic issue and has a significant impact on the efficiency of a manufacturing system. Much of the existing layout design literature that uses a surrogate function for flow distance or for simplified objectives may be entrapped into local optimum; and subsequently lead to a poor layout design due to the multiple-attribute decision making (MADM) nature of a layo...

A facility layout problem is concerned with determining the best position of departments, cells, or machines on the plant. An efficient layout contributes to the overall efficiency of operations. It’s been proved that, when system characteristics change, it can cause a significant increase in material handling cost. Consequently, the efficiency of the current layout decreases or is lost and it ...

Due to the increased competition in manufacturing industries play a driving force towards reducing the manufacturing costs by efficient design of facility layout. The success of manufacturing industries depends on the design of the facility that is able to adapt quickly and effectively for any changes in market requirements, technological changes, etc. The Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is a com...

In the nuclear industry, achieving Long Term Data Preservation is a requirement for nuclear power plants to be safely built, operated over five or six decades and retired. Among them, CAD data suffers from some strong dependencies on the software vendors and its data model thus leading to a possible weakness in the preservation workflow. This paper presents a modeling language, suitable for the...