Unequal Area Facility Layout Planning with Virtual Departments

Mehmet Gulsen () and Fatma Pinar Goksel
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Mehmet Gulsen: Baskent University
Fatma Pinar Goksel: Aksaray University

A chapter in Operational Research in the Era of Digital Transformation and Business Analytics, 2023, pp 21-27 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This study proposes a solution approach to the layout problem in facilities with unequal department areas. To organize the layout, a flexible bay structure (FBS) is used as the basis. The FBS is commonly used in the design of production and retail facilities in which, departments are positioned in horizontal bays. Each bay typically includes multiple departments of varying lengths. The proposed approach starts with a randomly generated initial layout. To create the initial layout, the facility block is first divided into horizontal bays. Then, departments are randomly assigned to those bays. The assignment order determines the position of each department within a bay. By using the initial layout as a reference, alternative layouts are generated by two-way exchanges of departments. Relying solely on department swaps limits the variety in alternative generation (e.g., the number of departments in bays remains constant). To overcome this hurdle, we introduce virtual departments with zero areas. Introducing virtual departments enhances the search process by increasing the number and variety of possible solutions. A performance comparison with the standard two-way exchange algorithm on two test cases shows the superiority of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Two-way exchange; Flexible bay structure; BLOCPLAN; Layout optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-031-24294-6_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-24294-6_3

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