Solving the Facility Layout Problem with Genetic Algorithm

Layout problems are common in various manufacturing systems. Actually, the layout problems are related to the location of facilities in a plant, and they have great impact on system performance. However, real systems are large and complicated, and the computation cost of them is high. Thus, the most of layout problems are NP hard. The notion of survival signature is introduced to preprocess the layout problem, and it reduces the economic costs and complexity of computation. Then, the optimization of layout solutions are presented by the genetic algorithm( GA). This study demonstrates that the proposed algorithm is effective, and it can be used in solving the larger layout problems.