238

Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2012

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems: current

trend and future direction
Anirban Kundu*
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,
Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016, India
E-mail: anirbankundu127@yahoo.com
*Corresponding author

Pranab K. Dan
Industrial Engineering and Management,
West Bengal University of Technology,
BF-142, Salt Lake City, Sector-I,
Kolkata 700064, India
Fax: +91 33 2334 1030
E-mail: dan1pk@hotmail.com
Abstract: A state-of-the-art review, spanning the last two decades, on
application of metaheuristic methods in facility layout problems (FLPs) to
gauge the current and emerging trends involving new design objectives,
algorithms and methodologies to the combinatorial optimisation aspects is
presented in this work. Fresh developments in emerging layout research, as
analysed in this study, provide a perspective on what the future of the field will
be like. A tendency of using metaheuristics, such as genetic algorithm (GA),
simulated annealing (SA), ant colony optimisation (ACO) and particle swarm
optimisation (PSO) with a trend towards multi-objective approaches to layout
and material handling system design is observed.
Keywords: facility layout design; application of metaheuristics; methodology
grouping; soft-computing; genetic algorithm; simulated annealing; tabu search;
ant colony optimisation; particle swarm optimisation.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kundu, A. and Dan, P.K.
(2012) Metaheuristic in facility layout problems: current trend and future
direction, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 2,
pp.238253.
Biographical notes: Anirban Kundu is a PhD scholar in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, and
working in the area of Industrial Engineering. He obtained his BTech degree in
Computer Science and Engineering in the year of 2006, MTech degree
in Industrial Engineering and Management in the year of 2010 from West
Bengal University of Technology, India. His research interest includes facility
layout planning and design, supply chain management and soft computing.
Pranab K. Dan obtained his BE and ME in Mechanical Engineering from
Bengal Engineering Science University, Shibpur, India and the PhD in
Production Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. His research
Copyright 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

239

and professional experience is in the area of Industrial Engineering. He is a

Reader in Industrial Engineering at the School of Engineering and Technology
at the West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata, India. Before joining
academics, he worked in several industrial organisations at middle and senior
positions. He consulted a number of companies and conducted a number of
training programmes for engineers and executives in industry, and has also
published a number of articles in international/national journals as well as in
conference proceedings. He is an active member of the Technical Education
and Training Committee of The Confederation of Indian Industry, eastern
region.

Introduction

Facility layout design (FLD) also known as plant layout design, in manufacturing
setup, can be defined as one of the most fundamental operation, which involves planning,
designing and optimisation of physical arrangement of resources, namely man, machine,
material and supporting production system to streamline production. Such system, as a
consequence of the intervention for optimisation, also helps to better quality in many
situations. Since 1960s to current era of integrated manufacturing, this problem evolved
with varied shapes and dimensions. In most of the cases, quadratic assignment problem
(QAP) model is used as the formulation technique for facility layout problem (FLP),
which is NP-complete in nature (See and Wong, 2008). In order to deal with these
complexities, different methodologies were introduced to achieve workable solutions.
Computerised techniques for designing a new layout or improving the existing layout
were initiated by classical software for FLD as CRAFT (Armour and Buffa, 1963),
CORELAP (Sepponen, 1969), COFAD (Tompkins and Reed, 1976), ALDEP (Seehof
and Evans, 1967) and PLANET (Konz, 1985). But using multi-objective approach
(Krishnan et al., 2008; ahin and Trkbey, 2009) with metaheuristics-based procedures
are the contemporary trend as evident from the survey of literature, and only very few
researches have been reported with conventional heuristic approach. Metaheuristic
procedures, namely genetic algorithm (GA), tabu search (TS), simulated annealing (SA),
ant colony optimisation (ACO), particle swarm optimisation (PSO), hybrid system and
application of virtual reality (VR) have been proposed to optimise layout design.
Many successful and valuable reviews mainly focused on analysing different research
directions of FLP have already been published over last two decades. Few of them are
reviews done by Levary and Kalchik (1985), Kusiak and Heragu (1987), Hassan (1994),
Benjaafar et al. (2002), Singh and Sharma (2006) and Drira et al. (2007). Some literature
reviews are also found focused on a precise characteristic of FLP, such as dynamic layout
design problem (Balakrishnan and Cheng, 1998), loop layout design (Asef-Vaziri and
Laporte, 2005) and evolutionary algorithms in FLP (Pierreval et al., 2003). But the rapid
and promising advancement in application of metaheuristics in layout design optimisation
insists this review work. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review, spanning the last
two decades, on application of different metaheuristic methods in FLP to gauge current
and emerging trends involving new design objectives and methodologies to the
combinatorial optimisation aspects. A classification of literature is presented in Section 2
to justify the need of this review. Different metaheuristics along with their application in

240

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

FLP reviewed in Section 3. An analysis of the current and future trend of research is
presented in Section 4.

Classification of literature

Here in this paper, the literature of FLP is classified based on optimisation methodology,
specially focused on metaheuristic methods. In this paper, four major metaheuristic-based
solution techniques, namely SA, TS, GA, ACO and PSO are reviewed.
Other than these methods, fuzzy sets are also found to make rank-order relations
between facilities (Dweiri, 1999; Karray et al., 2000). Limited work on FLP, using
artificial neural network (ANN) (Tsuchiya et al., 1996), clonal selection algorithm (CSA)
(Ulutas and Islier, 2010) are found in literature. Alvarenga et al. (2000) compared
performance of TS and SA in case of single-row and multi-row FLP with their QAP
nature, and reported TS as computationally better than SA though both of them servers
same quality solution. A review on application of SA and GA in FLP is resented by
Mavridou and Pardalos (1997). At the same time, efficient parallel implementations of
these algorithms are also reported to be useful in FLD.
FLD objectives are also changing over the period with the challenges in
manufacturing system, like layout design to support mass production, then mass
customisation, then flexible manufacturing system and also to incorporate leanness and
agility into system. FLD optimisation objectives have been classified into two types: one,
static layout, which is designed for a long-term planning without considering variation of
product mix and capacity or volume of production over a period; two, dynamic layout,
which is designed robust in nature, required slight or no change to stay tuned with
variability of production volume and product mix in long run.
Most of the cases for static layout optimisation aim for minimisation of total material
handling or flow cost, flow time, maximisation of closeness rating score, optimisation of
layout area, fitting new facility into existing layout or skeleton, manufacturing cell
formation and optimisation of material handling system, minimisation of work
interference and multi-level layout design.
Design of flexible layout, minimisation of re-layout cost, minimisation of material
handling cost with variable production capacity, and minimisation of total plant area with
stochastic production level are the preferred objectives for dynamic layout generation. In
some cases product-wise variation in demand are considered as a major aspect for risk
minimisation in dynamic FLP (Krishnan et al., 2009). Krishnan et al. (2006) proposed
dynamic from-between charts to capture variability in production rate and to analyse
redesign of layouts.
A multi-objective layout design varies with the variation of objective strength, which
is designer dependent and sometimes suffers due to dominated solutions. Thus, a
mechanism to intensify objectives irrespective of designer becomes a good approach for
automated layout design systems (Singh and Singh, 2009).
Here in this paper, frequently used formulation techniques of FLP are identified,
mainly used representation of objective function is presented. In most of the cases, QAP
model is used as the objective function presentation or the formulation technique (El-Baz,
2004; Hani et al., 2007; Kulkarni and Shanker, 2007; Lee and Lee, 2002; Matsuzaki
et al., 1999; Mir and Imam, 2001; Osman et al., 2003; Paul et al., 2006; Ramkumar et al.,
2009; Scholz et al., 2009; Seo et al., 2006; Solimanpur et al., 2004; Yang et al., 2005).

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

241

The mixed integer programming (MIP) (Dong et al., 2009; Gau and Meller, 1999; Liu
and Li, 2006; ahin and Trkbey, 2009; Wu et al., 2007) as a formulation technique can
be placed next to QAP and followed by non-linear mixed integer programming (NLMIP)
(Castillo and Peters, 2003) and non-linear programming (NLP) (Camp et al., 1991) in the
order of use. There are two classes of objective function representation considered in
general. First one is adjacency based and the second one distance based.
Adjacency-based function parameters are closeness rating of departments and a
decision variable. Closeness rating is the numerical value corresponding to the closeness
rank order, typically presented as rij. Decision variable, typically represented as xij, take 1
or 0 value depending on whether department i is adjacent to department j or not. The
following equation (Equation (1)) depicts adjacency-based representation of objective
function for FLP (Meller and Gau, 1996; Singh and Sharma, 2006).

max

 r  x
ij

(1)

ij

where n total number of departments; i 1, 2,}, n; j 1, 2,}, n.

Functional parameters associated with distance-based computation are
1

distance between departments in a predefined, which often is Euclidian or rectilinear,

distance measurement metric

frequency of material flow between departments

unit cost of handling material between departments.

Distance between department pair, department i and department j denoted as dij.

Frequency of material flow between department i and department j is typically
represented as fij and the cost of interdepartmental material handling is denoted as cij. The
following equation (Equation (2)) portrays distance-based representation of objective
function for FLP (Meller and Gau, 1996).
min

 f c  d
ij ij

(2)

ij

where n total number of department; i 1, 2,}, n; j 1, 2,}, n.

In case of multi-floor layout both the horizontal and vertical material handling cost
and distance included in objective function, stated here-in-under (Equation 3) where
superscript notation H and V indicates horizontal and vertical movements,
respectively (Meller and Gau, 1996).
min

H H
ij d ij

 cijV dijV fij

(3)

where n total number of department; i 1, 2,}, n; j 1, 2,},n.

The metaheuristic techniques to optimise the above objectives are reviewed in the
next sections. Review on different metaheuristics-based methods like SA is presented in
Section 3.1, while TS-based approach is illustrated in Section 3.2. GA-based solutions are
elucidated in Section 3.3, followed by Section 3.4 containing illustrations on ACO and
PSO-based solution methodologies for FLP.

242

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

Review of literature

3.1 Simulated annealing-based method

SA is a stochastic search process based on the concept of annealing (Coello Coello
et al., 2007). The annealing of a solid material is two-phase method. In the first phase,
solid material is heated up to a certain temperature where its atoms can move freely or
randomly in material. In second phase, this hot material is allowed to cool slowly so that
the atoms can rearrange themselves into a lower energy state to form crystal. This second
phase is also known as crystallisation process. Since the crystalline state is the minimum
energy state of the system, this process can be thought of minimisation of free energy of
the system or solid. It is found that improper heating and/or fast cooling can lead solid to
an amorphous state with higher energy level. This situation is an analogy of reaching a
local minimum instead of global minimum of the system energy, and hence proper
schedule for annealing is vital.
There are several important analogies found in literature between annealing and
combinatorial optimisation. The system analogies are:
1

the system state at any point of time, that is, at a system energy level is analogous to
a particular solution of the optimisation problem

the free energy of the system is analogous to the decision variables of the objective
function

the slight perturbation imposed on the system to change state analogous to a

movement into a neighbourhood solution with respect to the local search

the cooling schedule corresponds to the control or iteration mechanism for the search
algorithm

the crystalline state of the system analogous to the final solution generated by the
algorithm (single solution). The first two analogies stated here-in-before are
subjected to minimisation.

In case of single objective optimisation problem SA is guaranteed to converge in

asymptotic time, though the computational time grows exponentially with respect to the
size of the problem (Coello Coello et al., 2007). The disadvantage of SA is that it requires
multiple runs to defining proper cooling schedule in order to get optimum solution.
It seems that SA as a method is being preferred by the researchers in the field, staring
form manufacturing cell design to multi-objective optimisation of dynamic and static
behaviour of FLP irrespective of whether it is an equal or an unequal sized facilities
(Castillo and Peters, 2003; Dong et al., 2009; Ioannou, 2007; McKendall et al., 2006;
ahin and Trkbey, 2009; ahin et al., 2010; Souilah, 1995). Concept of Pareto front
generation, application of non-dominated solution techniques are getting powered by SAbased algorithms (Ioannou, 2007; ahin and Trkbey, 2009). Hybrid method of SA with
TS (Sugiyono, 2006), SA and GA (Matsuzaki et al., 1999) helps to avoid high
computational cost (Mir and Imam, 2001) and improves the solution, both qualitatively as
well as quantitatively.

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

243

A survey of SA-based facility layout literature, done for this research, is tabulated in
Table 1, wherein eight major objectives selected for SA-based solution are tabulated
in columns A to G and detailed out as follows:
A

minimisation of Material handling and total closeness rating score

minimising re-layout cost

total area optimisation and stochastic level of production

vehicle routing

optimisation of fixed and variable cost of production

minimisation of material handling cost

optimise number and location of elevators

material flow path design.

3.2 Tabu search-based method

TS is an iterative metaheuristic method where at each iteration, current solution moves to
the neighbourhood point comprising of smallest value with respect to the objective
function. One of the main components of TS is its adaptive memory, which creates more
flexible search behaviour (Glover and Laguna, 1997) for responsive exploration.
Incorporation of adaptive memory in TS builds its capability that the solution is not stuck
into local optima. There are four major building blocks of tabu memory structure, which
is referred to as, recency, frequency, quality and influence. Recency and frequency-based
memories are complementary in nature, and a combined use helps in recognising the
replica solutions. Quality-based memory helps to judge the goodness of the solution and
short moves are taken in neighbourhood. Influence-based memory takes care of system
learning during the search process.
Table 1

Survey of SA-based FLP literature

Objectives

Sl. No. References

Modelling technique

Castillo and Peters (2003) NLMIP

Dong et al. (2009)

MIP

Ioannou (2007)

IP

Matsuzaki et al. (1999)

QAP and slicing tree

McKendall et al. (2006)

Modified QAP

Mir and Imam (2001)

QAP

ahin and Trkbey (2009) MIP

Singh and Sharma (2007)

QAP

Sugiyono (2006)

Bond energy algorithm

10

ahin et al. (2010)

QAP

11

Yang et al. (2005)

MIP

244

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

Intensification and diversification strategies are also highly important components of TS

(Glover and Laguna, 1997). Intensification is realised by storing in its memory the
historically found good or elite solution and the corresponding search move
combinations. It helps to concentrate search around the good solution region, and also
helps the search process to escape from bad region. Diversification strategy helps to find
out new region of solutions, which were not explored during the search and it also helps
to get away from sticking to local optimal solutions.
To facilitate these strategies, TS uses a short-term, intermediate-term and long-term
memory. Short-term memory stores the variable values of the recently visited points and
marks them as tabu, meaning forbidden, to avoid cycling within local region.
Intermediate-term memory stores optimal or near optimal solution to help the
intensification operation, while the long-term memory keeps track of the under-explored
regions as well as the regions which were already explored exhaustively thereby helping
the diversification.
In case of FLP the TS has been widely used in optimising material handling cost,
utilisation of space, minimisation of re-layout cost for both single- and multi-objective
problems (Abdinnour-Helm and Hadley, 2000; McKendall and Hakobyan, 2010; Scholz
et al., 2009; Seo et al., 2006; Yang et al., 1999). TS is also deployed for optimising single
row FLD problem (a special class of FLP) by Samarghandi and Eshghi (2010). But
difficulties have been encountered when TS was deployed for continuous search space
due to the approximation introduced on account of digitisation of continuous space
(Coello Coello et al., 2007). Yang et al. (1999) used SA to overcome computational
complexities and difficulties of TS. Liang and Chao (2008) proposed a special different
intensification and diversification strategies, which shows better convergence of
searching to get proper arrangement of facilities. Improved TS algorithm with
intensification, reconstruction and solution acceptance operation was proposed by Singh
(2009), which gives comparative result with respect to some benchmark problems found
in QAP-based FLP literature.
The survey findings of TS-based facility layout literature undertaken in this work is
tabulated in Table 2, wherein four major objectives selected for TS-based solution are
tabulated in columns A to D, which is as follows:
A

minimising total material handling or flow cost

minimise size of resulting layout or maximise utilisation of area

minimising re-layout cost

total area optimisation with stochastic level of production.

Table 2

Survey of TS-based FLP literature

Sl. No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

References
Abdinnour-Helm and Hadley (2000)
Chiang (2001)
McKendall and Hakobyan (2010)
Scholz et al. (2009)
Seo et al. (2006)
Sugiyono (2006)
Yang et al. (1999)

Modelling technique
Graph partitioning
QAP
MILP
QAP
QAP
Bond energy algorithm
UMNFP

Objectives
B
C

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

245

3.3 Genetic algorithm-based method

Search mechanism in GA actually is based on the mechanism of natural selection and
natural genetics. GA is widely used in optimisation problem due to its robustness
(Goldberg, 1989) and is a tool in industrial engineering optimisation problems deployed
in the recent past (Gen and Cheng, 2000). Building block of GA consists of five major
elements:
1

a genetic representation of solution

a well-defined mechanism to generate initial population

a fitness function to evaluate solution quality

genetic operators, namely crossover and mutation, analogous to biological operation

to generate offspring

parameter values.

An encoded representation of problem parameters, used as chromosome, is generally

found in the form of string of binary or real numbers. Each variable is analogous to the
gene of biological chromosome, and such gene values are decoded to yield solutions to
the problem. Reproduction or selection operator replicates good solutions and eliminates
bad solutions from the population, while keeping the population size unchanged. Roulette
wheel and tournament selection process are well established for this operation, however
tournament selection shows better performance in comparison to other selection operators
(Deb, 2001). Crossover operator is used to generate offspring from parent chromosome
by means of interchanging substring(s). No such restriction posed on the exact procedure
to crossover in GA; rather they are problem and domain specific. On the other hand,
mutation operator is used to change a particular allele value by means of replacing this
with its complement in case of binary-coded GA. Flexibility is maintained for the
mutation rules for providing robustness to the algorithm.
From the literature review, undertaken in the present work, it is observed that GA has
rather frequently been used in the recent period as an optimisation tool for FLP. As
indicated by Pierreval et al. (2003), application of GA was found to be of significant
proportion in optimising QAP formulation for FLP. It is observed during the present
study undertaken that in most cases the minimisation of material handling cost is
considered as an objective function (Gau and Meller, 1999; Rajasekharan et al., 1998;
Ramkumar et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2008a,b; Zhang et al., 2002). However, relatively
fewer reports addressed flexibility of layout (Eklund et al., 2006), layout with aisle
structure (Delmaire et al., 1997; Wu and Appleton, 2002), inter- and intra-cell material
handling in cellular layout (Kulkarni and Shanker, 2007; Wu et al., 2007), maximum
utilisation of space (Lee and Lee, 2002) and minimisation of total travelling distance (Li
and Love, 2000). Facility dispositions and its geometrical orientations are generally
encoded as slicing tree, ordered set of facilities, facility number order, xy coordinate
maps to generate initial population (Delmaire et al., 1997; Gau and Meller, 1999; Osman
et al., 2003; Wang et al., 2008a). The difficulties of applying classical crossover,
mutation operators on FLP were addressed by Al-Hakim (2000). Different problemspecific modified crossover and mutation operation were developed (Delmaire et al.,
1997; Eklund et al., 2006; Ramkumar et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2008a; Wu and Appleton,
2002) to achieve better efficiency of GA. The operators have also been modified to

246

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

preserve elite solutions (Delmaire et al., 1997). Wu et al. (2007) tested response of
different GA crossover, mutation rate, population size and maximum number
of generation on their problem. Parallel implementation of SA and GA, where GA used
for global search and SA applied for local search, is also proposed by Ku et al. (2010).
Shayan (2009) developed GA-based software for layout design with an easy GUI.
Ease to hybrid GA with other algorithms and its ability of constraint handling by
penalisation, as a property has made GA a preferred tool for multi-objective optimisation
for FLP. Generally, hybrid GA with SA or TS method chosen as algorithm to optimise
multiple objectives, such as material handling cost and space utilisation (Lee and Lee,
2002), placing facilities around an aisle structure and optimisation of material handling
cost (Delmaire et al., 1997), minimisation of material handling cost and re-layout cost
(Kochhar and Heragu, 1999), loop layout in flexible manufacturing system (Cheng et al.,
1996). GA in cellular manufacturing has been applied in cell formation and group layout,
involving optimisation of inter- and intra-cell material handling effort (Kulkarni and
Shanker, 2007; Wu et al., 2007).
Smith and Heim (1999) applied VR techniques in FLD process. GA-based solutions
are extended by VR (Wang et al., 2008a,b) or AutoCAD representation (Osman et al.,
2003) to facilitate visualisation of quality of solution.
The survey findings of GA-based facility layout literature, undertaken in this work is
tabulated in Table 3, wherein six major objectives selected for GA-based solution are
tabulated in columns A to F, which is as follows:
A

minimising total material handling or flow cost

minimise size of resulting layout or maximise utilisation of area

generation of flexible layout

minimise material handling cost for inter-cell and intra-cell movement

minimising total rectilinear distance travel for material

optimisation of aisle structure.

3.4 ACO and PSO-based method

ACO and PSO approaches are based on intelligent behaviour of ant and behaviour of
particle swarm for finding optimal path of travel among facilities. The main concept is
self-organising behaviour, translated in the ability to trace the shortest path between two
location points bypassing an impeding obstacle, of ant used in discrete optimisation
problem (Dorigo and Sttzle, 2004). This method uses a trail of pheromones to find
optimum path. ACO has emerged as a potent metaheuristic procedure, in recent time, to
solve QAP formulation of FLP (See and Wong, 2008). Komarudin and Wong (2010)
proposed ant system (AS), which is one of the ACO variants-based solution for FLP,
having unequal area facilities. Different local search techniques were integrated with
ACO to improve search performance. At the same time, flexible bay structuring along
with ACO is also used by Wong and Komarudin (2010); Kulturel-Konak and Abdullah
(2010) to optimise FLP. The review findings of ACO- and PSO-based facility layout

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

247

literature undertaken in this work is tabulated in Table 4, wherein two major objectives
selected for ACO- and PSO-based solution are tabulated in columns A and B, which is as
follows:
A

minimising total material handling or flow cost

Consider unequal area and passage spaces.

Table 3

Survey of GA-based FLP literature

Objectives

Sl. No.

References

Modelling technique

Delmaire et al. (1997)

LP

Diego-Mas et al. (2009)

Slicing Tree

Dunker et al. (2005)

DP

Eklund et al. (2006)

MIP

El-Baz (2004)

QAP

Gau and Meller (1999)

MIP

Hicks (2004)

Agglomerative clustering

Hu and Wang (2004)

QAP

Kochhar and Heragu (1999)

MIP

10

Kulkarni and Shanker (2007)

QAP

11

Lee and Lee (2002)

QAP

12

Liu and Li (2006)

MIP

13

Longo et al. (2005)

QAP

14

Osman et al. (2003)

QAP

15

Rajasekharan et al. (1998)

MIP

16

Ramkumar et al. (2009)

QAP

17

Wang et al. (2008a)

Simulation

18

Wang et al. (2008b)

Simulation and VR

19

Wu and Appleton (2002)

QAP

20

Wu et al. (2007)

MIP

Table 4

Survey of ACO- and PSO-based FLP literature

Objectives

Sl. No.

References

Hani et al. (2007)

Modelling technique

QAP

Method
ACO

Hardin and Usher (2005)

QAP

Paul et al. (2006)

QAP

PSO

Ramkumar et al. (2008)

QAP

ACO

Solimanpur et al. (2004)

QAP

ACO

Teo and Ponnambalam (2008)

NLP

ACO and PSO

PSO

248

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

Current trend and future scope of work

From this review a trend of using GA, SA, TS, ACO and PSO to optimise multi-objective
FLP is observed. Building slicing tree for FLD, minimising material handling cost are
considered as primary objectives with other objectives like minimising re-layout cost,
maximising closeness in SA-based methods. Hybrid algorithms like SA and GA are also
used to avoid certain limitations of SA. TS is found to be applied for single-objective
optimisation of FLP. In most of the cases, minimisation of material handling cost is
selected for GA-based methods. GA-based algorithms applied for equal and unequal area
facilities, and used to generate single-floor FLD. Customisation of GA operators,
crossover and mutation are robust and flexible enough. These operators are modified to
deal different variation of FLP. Other local search methods are generally integrated with
GA to speed up search. ACO can be considered as the most suitable algorithm for FLP
solving, as its working principle demonstrates minimisation behaviour. ACO is applied,
so far, for minimisation of material handling cost, but it is still in its improvement phase;
ACO is emerging. Learning of ants and its application can also be a focus area for future
research. ACO combined with some global search like GA have potential to produce
better solution. Hybrid algorithms like GA and SA, SA and TS also performing well in
solving unequal FLP. Thrust on optimisation modalities for dynamic facility layout for
space requirement and reducing re-layout cost is also noted, while the basic consideration
of material handling cost continues to hold its importance. Depending on the variability
of objectives and methodologies, it can be noted that FLPs are being dealt with a wider
range of factors to be considered. Application of hybrid techniques like metaheuristics
and AI for setting the priority among the objectives and subsequent optimisation;
generation of hybrid layout, independent of designers intervention and application of
Parallel GA can be projected as the future scope in designing robust facility layouts.
Hence, research possibilities should be explored on the above lines.

Conclusion

The review on application of metaheuristic in FLD in manufacturing environment has

been carried out here. Various algorithms to solve FLP are discussed, and the objectives
with their modelling techniques are summarised and tabulated for the convenience of
users. Finally, the future scope of research in this domain is also suggested.

Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank reviewers of this paper for their constructive and helpful
recommendations.

References
Abdinnour-Helm, S. and Hadley, S.W. (2000) Tabu search based heuristics for multi-floor facility
layout, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp.365383.

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

249

Al-Hakim, L. (2000) On solving facility layout problems using genetic algorithms, Int. J.
Production Research, Vol. 38, No. 11, pp.25732582.
Alvarenga, A.G.D., Ros-Gomes, F.J.N. and Mestria, M. (2000) Metaheuristic methods for a class
of the facility layout problem, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Vol. 11, pp.421430.
Armour, G.C. and Buffa, E.S. (1963) A heuristic algorithm and simulation approach to relative
allocation of facilities, Management Science, Vol. 9, pp.294309.
Asef-Vaziri, A. and Laporte, G. (2005) Loop based facility planning and material handling,
European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 164, No. 1, pp.111.
Balakrishnan, J. and Cheng, C.H. (1998) Dynamic layout algorithms: a state of-the-art survey,
Omega, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp.507521.
Benjaafar, S., Heragu, S.S. and Irani, S.A. (2002) Next generation factory layouts: research
challenges and recent progress, Interface, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp.5876.
Camp, D.J.V., Carter, M.W. and Vannelli, A. (1991) A nonlinear optimization approach for
solving facility layout problems, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 57,
pp.174189.
Castillo, I. and Peters, B.A. (2003) An extended distance-based facility layout problem, Int. J.
Production Research, Vol. 41, No. 11, pp.24512479.
Cheng, R., Gen, M. and Tosawa, T. (1996) Genetic algorithms for designing loop layout
manufacturing systems, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp.587591.
Chiang, W. (2001) Visual facility layout design system, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 39,
No. 9, pp.18111836.
Coello Coello, C.A., Lamont, G.B. and Van Veldhuizen, D.A. (2007) Evolutionary Algorithms for
Solving Multi-Objective Problems, Springer, New York.
Deb, K. (2001) Multi-Objective Optimization using Evolutionary Algorithms, John Wiley & Sons
Ltd., England.
Delmaire, H., Langevin, A. and Riopel, D. (1997) Skeleton-based facility layout design using
genetic algorithms, Annals of Operations Research, Vol. 69, pp.85104.
Diego-Mas, J.A., Santamarina-Siurana, M.C., Alcaide-Marzal, J. and Cloquell-Ballester, V.A.
(2009) Solving facility layout problems with strict geometric constraints using a two-phase
genetic algorithm, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 47, No. 6, pp.16791693.
Dong, M., Wu, C. and Hou, F. (2009) Shortest path based simulated annealing algorithm for
dynamic facility layout problem under dynamic business environment, Expert Systems with
Applications, Vol. 36, No. 8, pp.1122111232.
Dorigo, M. and Sttzle, T. (2004) Ant Colony Optimization, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Press, England.
Drira, A., Pierreval, H. and Hajri-Gabouj, S. (2007) Facility layout problems: a survey, Annual
Reviews in Control, Vol. 31, pp.255267.
Dunker, T., Radons, G. and Westkamper, E. (2005) Combining evolutionary computation and
dynamic programming for solving a dynamic facility layout problem, European Journal of
Operational Research, Vol. 165, pp.5569.
Dweiri, F. (1999) Fuzzy development of crisp activity relationship charts for facilities layout,
Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 36, pp.116.
Eklund, N.H.W., Embrechts, M.J. and Goetschalckx, M. (2006) Efficient chromosome encoding
and problem-specific mutation methods for the flexible bay facility layout problem, IEEE
Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-PART C: Applications and Reviews, Vol. 36,
No. 4, pp.495502.
El-Baz, M.A. (2004) A genetic algorithm for facility layout problems of different manufacturing
environments, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 47, pp.233246.
Gau, K.Y. and Meller, R.D. (1999) An iterative facility layout algorithm, International Journal of
Production Research, Vol. 37, No. 16, pp.37393758.

250

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

Gen, M. and Cheng, R. (2000) Genetic Algorithms and Engineering Optimization, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., New York.
Glover, F. and Laguna, M. (1997) Tabu Search, Kluwer Academic Publishers, USA.
Goldberg, D.E. (1989) Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Machine Learning, Pearson
Education, Inc., India.
Hani, Y., Amodeo, L., Yalaoui, F. and Chen, H. (2007) Ant colony optimization for solving an
industrial layout problem, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 183, pp.633642.
Hardin, C.T. and Usher, J.S. (2005) Facility layout using swarm intelligence, in Swarm
Intelligence Symposium SIS2005. Proceedings 2005 IEEE, pp.424427.
Hassan, M.M.D. (1994) Machine layout problem in modern manufacturing facilities, Int. J.
Production Research, Vol. 32, No. 11, pp.25592584.
Hicks, C. (2004) A genetic algorithm tool for designing manufacturing facilities in the capital
goods industry, Int. J. Production Economics, Vol. 90, pp.199211.
Hu, M.H. and Wang, M.J. (2004) Using genetic algorithms on facilities layout problems, Int. J.
Advance Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 23, pp.301310.
Ioannou, G. (2007) An integrated model and a decomposition-based approach for concurrent
layout and material handling system design, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 52,
pp.459485.
Karray, F., Zaneldin, E., Hegazy, T., Shabeeb, A.H.M. and Elbeltagi, E. (2000) Tools of soft
computing as applied to the problem of facilities layout planning, IEEE Transactions on
Fuzzy Systems, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.367379.
Kochhar, J.S. and Heragu, S.S. (1999) Facility layout design in a changing environment, Int. J.
Production Research, Vol. 37, No. 11, pp.24292446.
Komarudin and Wong, K.Y. (2010) Applying ant system for solving unequal area facility layout
problems, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 202, No. 3, pp.730746.
Konz, S. (1985) Facility Design, Wiley, NY.
Krishnan, K.K., Cheraghi, S.H. and Nayak, C.N. (2006) Dynamic From-Between Chart: a new
tool for solving dynamic facility layout problems, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.182200.
Krishnan, K.K., Cheraghi, S.H. and Nayak, C.N. (2008) Facility layout design for multiple
production scenarios in a dynamic environment, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.105133.
Krishnan, K.K., Jithavech, I. and Liao, H. (2009) Mitigation of risk in facility layout design for
single and multi-period problems, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 47, No. 21,
pp.59115940.
Ku, M., Hu, M.H. and Wang, M. (2010) Simulated annealing based parallel genetic algorithm for
facility layout problem, Int. J. Production Research, First published on: 22 April 2010(iFirst),
DOI: 10.1080/00207541003645789.
Kulkarni, P.C. and Shanker, K. (2007) A genetic algorithm for layout problems in cellular
manufacturing systems, Proceedings of the IEEE IEEM, pp.694698.
Kulturel-Konak, S. and Abdullah, K. (2010) Unequal area flexible bay facility layout using ant
colony optimisation, Int. J. Production Research, First published on: 20 April 2010 (iFirst)
DOI: 10.1080/00207541003614371.
Kusiak, A. and Heragu, S.S. (1987) The facilities layout problem, European Journal of
Operational Research, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp.229251.
Lee, Y.H. and Lee, M.H. (2002) A shape-based block layout approach to facility layout problems
using hybrid genetic algorithm, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 42, pp.237248.
Levary, R.R. and Kalchik, S. (1985) Facilities layout-a survey of solution procedures, Computers
and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp.141148.
Li, H. and Love, P.E.D. (2000) Genetic search for solving construction site-level unequal-area
facility layout problems, Automation in Construction, Vol. 9, pp.217226.

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

251

Liang, L.Y. and Chao, W.C. (2008) The strategies of tabu search technique for facility layout
optimization, Automation in Construction, Vol. 17, pp.657669.
Liu, X. and Li, X. (2006) An improved genetic algorithms-based approach on supply chainoriented facility layout scheduling system, Proceedings of the 6th world Congress on
Intelligent Control and Automation, China.
Longo, F., Mirabelli, G. and Papoff, E. (2005) Material flow analysis and plant lay-out
optimization of a manufacturing system, IEEE Workshop on Intelligent Data Acquisition and
Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications, 57 September 2005, Sofia,
Bulgaria.
Matsuzaki, K., Irohara, T. and Yoshimoto, K. (1999) Heuristic algorithm to solve the multi-floor
layout problem with the consideration of elevator utilization, Computers and Industrial
Engineering, Vol. 36, pp.487502.
Mavridou, T.D. and Pardalos, P.M. (1997) Simulated annealing and genetic algorithms for the
facility layout problem: a survey, Computational Optimization and Applications, Vol. 7,
pp.111126.
McKendall, A.R. and Hakobyan, A. (2010) Heuristics for the dynamic facility layout problem with
unequal-area departments, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 201, No. 1,
pp.171182.
McKendall Jr., A.R., Shanga, J. and Kuppusamy, S. (2006) Simulated annealing heuristics for the
dynamic facility layout problem, Computers and Operations Research, Vol. 33,
pp.24312444.
Meller, R.D. and Gau, K. (1996) The facility layout problem: recent and emerging trends and
perspectives, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp.351366.
Mir, M. and Imam, M.H. (2001) A hybrid optimization approach for layout design of unequal-area
facilities, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 39, pp.4963.
Osman, H.M., Georgy, M.E. and Ibrahim, M.E. (2003) A hybrid CAD-based construction site
layout planning system using genetic algorithms, Automation in Construction, Vol. 12,
pp.749764.
Paul, R.C., Asokan, P. and Prabhakar, V.I. (2006) A solution to the facility layout problem having
passages and inner structure walls using particle swarm optimization, Int. J. Advanced
Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 29, pp.766771.
Pierreval, H., Caux, C., Paris, J.L. and Viguier, F. (2003) Evolutionary approaches to the design
and organization of manufacturing systems, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 44,
pp.339364.
Rajasekharan, M., Peters, B.A. and Yang, T. (1998) A genetic algorithm for facility layout design
in flexible manufacturing systems, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp.95110.
Ramkumar, A.S., Ponnambalam, S.G. and Jawahar, N. (2008) A population-based hybrid ant
system for quadratic assignment formulations in facility layout design, Int. J. Advanced
Manufacturing Technology, DOI 10.1007/s00170-008-1849-y.
Ramkumar, A.S., Ponnambalam, S.G. and Jawahar, N. (2009) A new iterated fast local search
heuristic for solving QAP formulation in facility layout design, Robotics and ComputerIntegrated Manufacturing, Vol. 25, pp.620629.
ahin, R. and Trkbey, O. (2009) A simulated annealing algorithm to find approximate Pareto
optimal solutions for the multi-objective facility layout problem, Int. J. Advanced
Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 41, pp.10031018.
ahin, R., Ertogral, K. and Trkbey, O. (2010) A simulated annealing heuristic for the dynamic
layout problem with budget constraint, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 59,
pp.308313.
Samarghandi, H. and Eshghi, K. (2010) An efficient tabu algorithm for the single row facility
layout problem, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 205, pp.98105.

252

A. Kundu, and P.K. Dan

Scholz, D., Petrick, A. and Domschke, W. (2009) STaTS: a slicing tree and tabu search based
heuristic for the unequal area facility layout problem, European Journal of Operational
Research, Vol. 197, pp.166178.
See, P.C. and Wong, K.Y. (2008) Application of ant colony optimisation algorithms in solving
facility layout problems formulated as quadratic assignment problems: a review, Int. J.
Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp.644672.
Seehof, J.M. and Evans, W.O. (1967) Automated layout design program, The Journal of
Industrial Engineering, Vol. 18, No. 12, pp.690695.
Seo, Y., Sheen, D., Moon, C. and Kim, T. (2006) Integrated design of workcells and unidirectional
flowpath layout, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 51, pp.142153.
Sepponen, R. (1969) CORELAP8 User Manual, Department of Industrial Engineering,
Northeastern University, Boston.
Shayan, E. (2009) Software implementation and experimentation with a new genetic algorithm for
layout design, Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.116124.
Singh, S.P. (2009) Solving facility layout problem: three-level tabu search metaheuristic
approach, Int. J. Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.7377.
Singh, S.P. and Sharma, R.R.K. (2006) A review of different approaches to the facility layout
problems, Int. J. Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 30, pp.425433.
Singh, S.P. and Sharma, R.R.K. (2007) Two-level modified simulated annealing based approach
for solving facility layout problem, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 46, No. 13,
pp.35633582.
Singh, S.P. and Singh, V.K. (2009) An improved heuristic approach for multi-objective facility
layout problem, Int. J. Production Research, First published on 12 January 2009.
Smith, R.P. and Heim, J.A. (1999) Virtual facility layout design: the value of an interactive threedimensional representation, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 37, No. 17, pp.39413957.
Solimanpur, M., Vrat, P. and Shankar, R. (2004) Ant colony optimization algorithm to the intercell layout problem in cellular manufacturing, European Journal of Operational Research,
Vol. 157, pp.592606.
Souilah, A. (1995) Simulated annealing for manufacturing systems layout design, European
Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 82, pp.592614.
Sugiyono, A. (2006) Cellular manufacturing system aplication on redesign production layout with
using heuristics algorithm, In 2006 IEEE International Conference on Management of
Innovation and Technology, pp.940944.
Teo, Y.T. and Ponnambalam, S.G. (2008) A hybrid ACO/PSO heuristic to solve single row layout
problem, In 4th IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, pp.597602, Key
Bridge Marriott, Washington DC, USA.
Tompkins, J.A. and Reed Jr., R. (1976) An applied model for the facilities design problem, Int. J.
Production Research, Vol. 14, No. 5, pp.583595.
Tsuchiya, K., Bharitkar, S. and Takefuji, Y. (1996) A neural network approach to facility layout
problems, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 89, pp.556563.
Ulutas, B.H. and Islier, A.A. (2010) A clonal selection algorithm for dynamic facility layout
problems, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, doi:10.1016/j.jmsy.2010.06.002.
Wang, G., Yan, Y., Zhang, X., Shangguan, J. and Xiao, Y. (2008a) Integrating simulation
optimization with VR for facility layout evaluation, Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE IEEM.
Wang, G., Yan, Y., Zhang, X., Shangguan, J. and Xiao, Y. (2008b) A simulation optimization
approach for facility layout problem, In 2008 International Conference on Information
Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering.
Wong, K.Y. and Komarudin (2010) Solving facility layout problems using flexible bay structure
representation and ant system algorithm, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 37,
pp.55235527.

Metaheuristic in facility layout problems

253

Wu, Y. and Appleton, E. (2002) The optimization of block layout and aisle structure by a genetic
algorithm, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 41, pp.371387.
Wu, X., Chu, C., Wang, Y. and Yan, W. (2007) A genetic algorithm for cellular manufacturing
design and layout, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 181, pp.156167.
Yang, T., Rajasekharan, M. and Peters, B.A. (1999) Semiconductor fabrication facility
design using a hybrid search methodology, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 36,
pp.565583.
Yang, T., Peters, B.A. and Tu, M. (2005) Layout design for flexible manufacturing systems
considering single-loop directional flow patterns, European Journal of Operational Research,
Vol. 164, pp.440455.
Zhang, G.Q., Xue, J. and Lai, K.K. (2002) A class of genetic algorithm for multiple-level
warehouse layout problems, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp.731744.

Bibliography
Chan, W.M., Chan, C.Y. and Ip, W.H. (2002) A heuristic algorithm for machine assignment in
cellular layout, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 44, pp.4973.
Chung, J. and Tanchoco, J.M.A. (2009) Layout design with hexagonal floor plans and material
flow patterns, Int. J. Production Research, First published on 13 May 2009.
DeLaney, D., Herrmann, J.W., Ioannou, G., Lu, T., Minis, I., Mirza, A.H. and Palmer, R. (1995)
Design and implementation of a hybrid manufacturing facility, Computers and Industrial
Engineering, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp.315319.
Francis, R.L., McGinnis, L.F. and White Jr., J.A. (1992) Facility layout And Location An
Analytical Approach, Prentice-Hall Inc., New Jersey.
Hwang, H. (2004) Heuristic transporter routing model for manufacturing facility design,
Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 46, pp.243251.
Lim, H. and Noble, J.S. (2006) The impact of facility layout on overall remanufacturing system
performance, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.357371.
Moore, J.M. (1962) Plant Layout and Design, MacMillan Publishing Company Inc.
Onwubolu, G.C. and Mutingi, M. (2001) A genetic algorithm approach to cellular manufacturing
system, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 39, pp.125144.
Ponnambalam, S.G. and Ramkumar, V. (2001) A genetic algorithm for the design of a single-row
layout in automated manufacturing systems, Int. J. Advanced Manufacturing Technology,
Vol. 18, pp.512519.
Sinriech, D. and Tanchoco, J.M.A. (1991) Intersection graph method for AGV flow path design,
Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 29, No. 9, pp.17251732.
Tompkins, J.A. and White, J.A. (1984) Facilities Planning, John Wiley and Sons.
Wang, S. and Sarker, B.R. (2002) Locating cells with bottleneck machines in cellular
manufacturing systems, Int. J. Production Research, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp.403424.