Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

2010

Abstract

This study is concerned with construction and improvement of a facility layout heuristic called Spiral Facility Layout Generation and Improvement Algorithm (SFLA). The algorithm starts with positioning departments from center point and continues like a hologram from center to outside. The aim of any facility layout algorithm is to better allocate the departments within facility. SFLA is compared with the existing space filling curve methods, MCRAFT and MULTIPLE, that are available in the literature. To form an initial spiral curve, a block system is used, like the bands for MCRAFT. The width and length of the blocks are given by user and departments are formed according to these values and placed around the spiral curve.

The initial layout can be selected either randomly or with a method which is called enhanced initial layout. Enhanced initial layout find the highest related department and put it into center and then add the other departments according to their relationships with the previous one.

20 departments data by Armour and Buffa(1963) have been used to test the performance of the SFLA. For bandwidth 4, SFLA gave better results than both MULTIPLE and MCRAFT. For the same flow data, 200 initial sequences selected randomly. Then initial layouts generated from these random sequences. Using pair wise exchange improvement methods both MCRAFT and SFLA layouts are improved. For bandwidth 4, SFLA often yielded better results than MCRAFT. Significance of the results is statistically tested.

Comments

Paper 5

Publication Title

Progress in Material Handling Research: 2010

ISBN

9781882780167

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