Citation

Nordin, Nurul Nadia and Ab Razak, Ruzanna and Marthandan, Govindan (2022) Solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problem (UA-FLP) with Hybrid Heuristics Methods. In: Postgraduate Social Science Colloquium 2022, 1 - 2 June 2022, Online.

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Abstract

Background - Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is deals with the placement of departments in a plane region in order to optimise the measures of performance of a system. Many approximate algorithms have been introduced with an extensive approach to deal with these problems. The existing algorithms focuses on the preliminary stage of FLPs and many studies on heuristic algorithms have faded away since quite a number of research has shifted to meta-heuristic algorithms. Though, it is still worth to explore heuristic algorithms as a stand-alone approach in greater detail. While in meta-heuristics, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is one of the most powerful in optimisation techniques based on principles from the evolution theory (Li, Sun, Tseng & Li, 2019; Zero, Bersani, Paolucci & Sacile, 2019). Over the past few years, the GA community has turned much of its attention toward the optimisation of network design problem (Ergenç, Eksert, & Onur, 2019; Hanh, Binh, Hoai, & Palaniswami, 2019; Kaur, Singh, & Kaur, 2019). The need for a new or improved and efficient approach is required for effective machines arrangement, particularly solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems (UA-FLPs). An effective arrangement of machines in a manufacturing plant is a crucial issue. This is in ensuring the company’s success while maintain competitiveness for it contributes beneficially to the overall performance of the manufacturing system by minimising the material handling costs (MHC) and lead times in addition to increase productivity. The plant reorganisation may interrupt operation, material flow, and is tedious. Nonetheless, the FLP can significantly impact the supply network and manufacturing processes. Nearly 50% of production costs are correlated with the MHC (Pérez-Gosende, 2021). Consequently, facility optimisation has been widely studied. Purpose - This study introduces a newly proposed heuristic approach, namely, “The Origin (TO)” and a hybrid approach by merging heuristic and population based meta-heuristic algorithms on Genetic Algorithm (GA), namely TOGA The proposed approach is used to work out on the UA-FLP with the main objective of minimising the sum of MHC and distance travelled between departments using Manhattan formulation while satisfying the restrictions of functional area size and reserve space. Design/methodology/approach - There are two parts of the algorithms development that have been the focused of this study. First is on heuristic method, namely The Origin Heuristics (TO) method and second part is on the hybrid TO heuristics and improved GA metaheuristic (iGA) method, namely ToGA. The developed method is among the first to implement TO heuristic and hybrid heuristics ToGA in Unequal Area Facility Layout problems (UA-FLPs). Findings/Expected Contributions - The effectiveness of the proposed approach can be conveniently illustrated by using numerical examples. All results will be compared with the existing methods. The proposed algorithms can be adopted in manufacturing industries in designing their layout since it can give a high efficiency utilisation of space in UA-FLPs specifically. It is hoped that this research will contribute to optimise the layout which in turn will minimise MHC. This will help the organisations to have competitive advantage over other organisations and to have sustainable existence. In addition, this research will add value to the body of optimisation problems by adding new meta-heuristic solution like ToGA. Future researchers can extend this algorithm to solve much more complicated layout problems. Research limitations - The research is for general purpose layout optimisation problems. The specific nature of manufacturing, service, government, and other special purpose layouts may require further work on these algorithms. For future work, specific constraints can be added in the algorithm such as the input or output points for all facilities, without having fixed manufacturing plant size. It is also recommended that other heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms to be applied. Originality/value - Among the first to implement The Origin (TO) heuristic method adapted from bottomleft-filled from bin-packing problem. Next effort, hybrid TO heuristic with metaheuristic, improved Genetic Algorithm (iGA), namely ToGA.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Facility Layout Problem, Unequal size FLP, The Origin, Genetic Algorithm, Optimisation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD9000-9999 Special industries and trades
Divisions:	Faculty of Management (FOM)
Depositing User:	Ms Suzilawati Abu Samah
Date Deposited:	11 Aug 2022 07:24
Last Modified:	19 Aug 2022 08:23
URII:	http://shdl.mmu.edu.my/id/eprint/10341

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