An improved fireworks algorithm for the constrained single-row facility layout problem

The single-row facility layout problem (SRFLP) decides upon the arrangement of facilities in a straight row so as to minimise the material handling cost. Generally, this problem allows the placement of the facilities in any location in any order without any restriction, but some practical SRFLP cases are required to meet various types of constraints imposed on the placement of its facilities in the engineering of the placement of factory machinery and equipment. According to this new perspective, we studied the constrained SRFLP (cSRFLP) in this paper. In this problem, a few facilities need to be placed in certain positions or specified orders with or without the requirement to be located next to each other. To address this novel layout problem, related constraints are defined and classified, and novel mixed-integer programming models for the problem are formulated. Subsequently, the CPLEX software is employed to solve this problem. Then a constrained improved fireworks algorithm is presented, which is discretised to solve the considered cSRFLP. Our computational experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than the existing algorithms in solving the problem.