Manufacturing Facilities Layout Design Considering Pick Up / Drop-Off Positions

This paper presents a modeling and solution methodology for manufacturing facilities layout design (FLD) considering pickup/drop-off (P/D) points on the periphery of the rectangular machine block. The model considers a set of P/D points under different possibilities to make the loading/unloading closer in order to generate a cost effective machine layout. The method simultaneously generates and improves the layout thus resulting a hybrid algorithm. It minimizes flow cost (FC) and dead space (DS) by using a bi-criterion objective function. The suggested procedure is coded in C language and implemented in a personal computer. The experimental tables and related analysis presented in this paper revealed that the proposed modeling of FLD considering P/D and its solution as suggested in this paper is worth pursuing.