An Efficient Hybrid Approach for the Dynamic Facility Layout Problems

Today’s severe global competition, rapid changes in technology, product mix and shortening life cycle of products force companies to evaluate and modify their facility layout in a periodic fashion. This type of layout problems is categorized as the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP). The objective of the paper is to minimize the sum of thematerial handling and the rearrangement costs in DFLP with equal-area facilities. The problem is NP-hard so that only small-sized problems can be solved in reasonable time. Hence, in the paper, a hybrid heuristics method is applied to solve the DFLP; i.e. clonal selection algorithm and simulated annealing. The results show that the hybrid heuristicmethod provides better solutions than other applied algorithms.

Keywords:

Dynamic facility layout problem , quadratic assignment problem , clonal selection algorithm , simulated annealing