A spring-embedding approach for the facility layout problem

Ignacio Castillo (ignacio.castilloualberta.ca)
Thaddeus Sim (tsimualberta.ca)

Abstract: The facility layout problem is concerned with finding the most efficient arrangement of a given number of departments with unequal area requirements within a facility. The facility layout problem is a hard problem, and therefore, exact solution methods are only feasible for small or greatly restricted problems. In this paper, we propose a spring-embedding approach that unlike previous approaches results in a model that is convex, from which final solutions are guaranteed to be globally optimal. Numerical results demonstrating the potential of our model and the efficiency of our solution methodology are presented.

Keywords: Facility planning and design; convex non-linear programming; optimization; augmented Lagrangian multiplier method

Category 1: Applications -- Science and Engineering (Facility Planning and Design )

Category 2: Convex and Nonsmooth Optimization (Convex Optimization )

Citation: University of Alberta School of Business Management Science Working Papers 02-5

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Entry Submitted: 12/01/2002
Entry Accepted: 12/01/2002
Entry Last Modified: 02/03/2003

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