Journal of Management Research

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An Improved Multi-goal Heuristic for Facility Layout Problems


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1 Management Studies Group Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (Rajasthan)
     

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This paper presents an improved multi-goal heuristic for facility layout design problems. The heuristic aims at the minimization of the objective function, which incorporates two factors: qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative factor involves the workflow and rectilinear distance and must be minimized, whereas, the qualitative factor represents the closeness rating and is maximized to obtain the optimal facility layout. The qualitative factor is derived from using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for greater meaning and accuracy. Also, the quantification of the qualitative factor with respect to the quantitative factor (by the usage of relative weights) is also obtained using the AHP. An improved heuristic approach is presented which considers all possible permutations of the facility layout to obtain the optimal solution.

Keywords

Facility Layout, Analytic Hierarchy Process
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  • An Improved Multi-goal Heuristic for Facility Layout Problems

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Authors

Subhash Chandra
Management Studies Group Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (Rajasthan)
Amit Jayachandran
Management Studies Group Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (Rajasthan)

Abstract


This paper presents an improved multi-goal heuristic for facility layout design problems. The heuristic aims at the minimization of the objective function, which incorporates two factors: qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative factor involves the workflow and rectilinear distance and must be minimized, whereas, the qualitative factor represents the closeness rating and is maximized to obtain the optimal facility layout. The qualitative factor is derived from using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for greater meaning and accuracy. Also, the quantification of the qualitative factor with respect to the quantitative factor (by the usage of relative weights) is also obtained using the AHP. An improved heuristic approach is presented which considers all possible permutations of the facility layout to obtain the optimal solution.

Keywords


Facility Layout, Analytic Hierarchy Process

References