Facility layout problem: Bibliometric and benchmarking analysis

Facility layout problem is related to the location of departments in a facility area, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration. Researches based on different approaches have been published in the last six decades and, to prove the effectiveness of the results obtained, several instances have been developed. This paper presents a general overview on the extant literature on facility layout problems in order to identify the main research trends and propose future research questions. Firstly, in order to give the reader an overview of the literature, a bibliometric analysis is presented. Then, a clusterization of the papers referred to the main instances reported in literature was carried out in order to create a database that can be a useful tool in the benchmarking procedure for researchers that would approach this kind of problems

Locating Emergency Facilities Using the Weighted k-median Problem: A Graph-metaheuristic Approach

An efficient approach is presented for addressing the problem of finding the optimal facilities location in conjunction with the k-median method. First the region to be investigated is meshed and an incidence graph is constructed to obtain connectivity properties of meshes. Then shortest route trees (SRTs) are rooted from nodes of the generated graph. Subsequently, in order to divide the nodes of graph or the studied region into optimal k subregions, k-median approach is utilized. The weights of the nodes are considered as the risk factors such as population, seismic and topographic conditions for locating facilities in the high-risk zones to better facilitation. For finding the optimal facility locations, a recently developed meta-heuristic algorithm that is called Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO) is used. The performance of the proposed method is investigated through different alternatives for minimizing the cost of the weighted k-median problem. As a case study, the Mazandaran province in Iran is considered and the above graph-metaheuristic approach is utilized for locating the facilities

New Tabu Search Heuristics for the Dynamic Facility Layout Problem

A manufacturing facility is a dynamic system that constantly evolves due to changes such as changes in product demands, product designs, or replacement of production equipment. As a result, the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) considers these changes and is defined as the problem of assigning departments to locations during a multi-period planning horizon such that the sum of the material handling and re-arrangement costs is minimised. In this paper, three tabu search (TS) heuristics are presented for this problem. The first heuristic is a simple TS heuristic. The second heuristic adds diversification and intensification strategies to the first, and the third heuristic is a probabilistic TS heuristic. To test the performances of the heuristics, two sets of test problems from the literature are used in the analysis. The results show that the second heuristic out-performs the other proposed heuristics and the heuristics available in the literature

Efecto de los decodificadores en la calidad de la solución para un problema de distribución de instalaciones UA-FLP

En este trabajo se propuso una comparación entre dos decodificadores diferentes para un problema de distribución de planta de áreas desiguales y dimensiones fijas UA-FLP; los decodificadores utilizados  son el decodificador en espiral y el decodificador en abanico. Para realizar este  trabajo se seleccionaron 6 instancias encontradas en la literatura y el problema se resolvió por medio de una metaheurística muy conocida en la comunidad científica como lo es el algoritmo genético básico. El objetivo principal de este estudio fue demostrar si existían diferencias en la calidad de la solución propuesta por cada uno de los decodificadores. Entre los resultados encontrados se evidencio que el decodificador en espiral ofrece mejores resultados en comparación con el decodificador  en abanico, en efecto  se logró demostrar que los  decodificadores tienen gran influencia  en la calidad de la  solución para este tipo de problemas.

Efecto de los decodificadores en la calidad de la solución para un problema de distribución de instalaciones UA-FLP

En este trabajo se propuso una comparación entre dos decodificadores diferentes para un problema de distribución de planta de áreas desiguales y dimensiones fijas UA-FLP; los decodificadores utilizados  son el decodificador en espiral y el decodificador en abanico. Para realizar este  trabajo se seleccionaron 6 instancias encontradas en la literatura y el problema se resolvió por medio de una metaheurística muy conocida en la comunidad científica como lo es el algoritmo genético básico. El objetivo principal de este estudio fue demostrar si existían diferencias en la calidad de la solución propuesta por cada uno de los decodificadores. Entre los resultados encontrados se evidencio que el decodificador en espiral ofrece mejores resultados en comparación con el decodificador  en abanico, en efecto  se logró demostrar que los  decodificadores tienen gran influencia  en la calidad de la  solución para este tipo de problemas.

The Incremental Cooperative Design of Preventive Healthcare Networks

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Soheil Davari, 'The incremental cooperative design of preventive healthcare networks', Annals of Operations Research, first published online 27 June 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 27 June 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-017-2569-1.In the Preventive Healthcare Network Design Problem (PHNDP), one seeks to locate facilities in a way that the uptake of services is maximised given certain constraints such as congestion considerations. We introduce the incremental and cooperative version of the problem, IC-PHNDP for short, in which facilities are added incrementally to the network (one at a time), contributing to the service levels. We first develop a general non-linear model of this problem and then present a method to make it linear. As the problem is of a combinatorial nature, an efficient Variable Neighbourhood Search (VNS) algorithm is proposed to solve it. In order to gain insight into the problem, the computational studies were performed with randomly generated instances of different settings. Results clearly show that VNS performs well in solving IC-PHNDP with errors not more than 1.54%.Peer reviewe

Un algoritmo híbrido basado en colonias de hormigas para la resolución de problemas de distribución en planta orientados a procesos

En este trabajo se presenta un algoritmo híbrido para resolver problemas de distribución en planta, considerando la posibilidad de incluir restricciones de tipo espacial o prioridades de cercanía. El algoritmo integra dos técnicas metaheurísticas: por un lado los algoritmos basados en colonias de hormigas (ACO) y por otro lado un algoritmo genético (AG) que permite mejorar el conjunto de soluciones obtenidas por las hormigas artificiales. En el ACO, un conjunto de hormigas artificiales construyen, de forma concurrente, un conjunto de posibles soluciones del problema por medio de asignaciones parciales de secciones o talleres a áreas de la planta. En ese proceso de asignación utilizan información heurística obtenida a partir de los datos del problema (distancias entre áreas, flujos entre secciones, capacidades de las áreas,...) y también la información que las hormigas precedentes aportan sobre el grado de eficiencia de las soluciones previamente obtenidas. En el trabajo se muestra la eficacia del algoritmo a partir de una implementación usando el software Mathematica

A New Optimization via Invasive Weeds Algorithm for Dynamic Facility Layout Problem

Abstract-The dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) is the problem of finding positions of departments o

An improved Ant Colony System for the Sequential Ordering Problem

It is not rare that the performance of one metaheuristic algorithm can be improved by incorporating ideas taken from another. In this article we present how Simulated Annealing (SA) can be used to improve the efficiency of the Ant Colony System (ACS) and Enhanced ACS when solving the Sequential Ordering Problem (SOP). Moreover, we show how the very same ideas can be applied to improve the convergence of a dedicated local search, i.e. the SOP-3-exchange algorithm. A statistical analysis of the proposed algorithms both in terms of finding suitable parameter values and the quality of the generated solutions is presented based on a series of computational experiments conducted on SOP instances from the well-known TSPLIB and SOPLIB2006 repositories. The proposed ACS-SA and EACS-SA algorithms often generate solutions of better quality than the ACS and EACS, respectively. Moreover, the EACS-SA algorithm combined with the proposed SOP-3-exchange-SA local search was able to find 10 new best solutions for the SOP instances from the SOPLIB2006 repository, thus improving the state-of-the-art results as known from the literature. Overall, the best known or improved solutions were found in 41 out of 48 cases.Comment: 30 pages, 8 tables, 11 figure