Minimizing work-in-process and material handling in the facilities layout problem

We consider the plant layout problem for a job shop environment. This problem is generally treated as the quadratic assignment problem with the objective of minimizing material handling costs. Here we investigate the relationship between material handling costs and average work-in-process. Under restrictive assumptions, an open queueing network model can be used to show that the problem of minimizing work-in-process reduces to the quadratic assignment problem. In this paper, we generalize these results through a simulation model, and develop a simple secondary measure which allows us to select the layout that minimizes average work-in-process levels from among solutions that are similar with respect to the objective function for the quadratic assignment problem.

[1]  Meir J. Rosenblatt,et al.  The facilities layout problem: a multi-goal approach , 1979 .

[2]  William L. Maxwell,et al.  Design of Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems , 1982 .

[3]  R. Burkard,et al.  A heuristic for quadratic Boolean programs with applications to quadratic assignment problems , 1983 .

[4]  Panagiotis Kouvelis,et al.  The plant layout problem in automated manufacturing systems , 1991 .

[5]  J. A. Buzacott,et al.  On Approximate Queueing Models of Dynamic Job Shops , 1985 .

[6]  P. Gilmore.  Optimal and Suboptimal Algorithms for the Quadratic Assignment Problem , 1962 .

[7]  S. Sahu,et al.  A multigoal heuristic for facilities design problems: MUGHAL , 1982 .

[8]  L. Kaufman,et al.  An algorithm for the quadratic assignment problem using Bender's decomposition , 1978 .

[9]  James F. Cox,et al.  Multiple criteria approach to the facilities layout problem , 1985 .

[10]  M. Bazaraa,et al.  A branch-and-bound-based heuristic for solving the quadratic assignment problem , 1983 .

[11]  Andrew Kusiak,et al.  The facility layout problem , 1987 .

[12]  L. R. Foulds.  Techniques for Facilities Layout: Deciding which Pairs of Activities Should be Adjacent , 1983 .

[13]  R. Burkard.  Quadratic Assignment Problems , 1984 .

[14]  R. Burkard,et al.  Assignment and Matching Problems: Solution Methods with FORTRAN-Programs , 1980 .

[15]  H. Sherali,et al.  Benders' partitioning scheme applied to a new formulation of the quadratic assignment problem , 1980 .

[16]  E. Lawler.  The Quadratic Assignment Problem , 1963 .

[17]  Gerald L. Thompson,et al.  A hybrid heuristic for the facilities layout problem , 1991, Comput. Oper. Res..