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Loop-based facility layout design under flexible bay structures

Asef Vaziri, A ; Sharif University of Technology

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2017.08.004
  3. Abstract:
  4. We develop heuristic procedures for concurrent design of block layout, material flow network, and input and output stations. Unlike the common practice in the flexible bay structure layout design, our objective function includes both loaded and empty flow between pairs of I/O stations. This measure of effectiveness is the main determinant of the fleet size of the vehicles, which in turn is the major driver of the total investment and operational costs in vehicle-based material handling. Our work is the first to design flexible bay structure layouts for loop-based material flow patterns. We first develop heuristic algorithms to configure the layout on the foundations of a unidirectional loop flow pattern. The loop and stations are then designed on the promising layouts. A set of improvement algorithms provide a better integration of the layout, loop, and stations. © 2017 Elsevier B.V
  5. Keywords:
  6. Flexible bay structures (FBS) ; Generalized traveling salesman problem (GTSP) ; Loop based facility layout ; Vehicle based material handling ; Fleet operations ; Flow patterns ; Heuristic algorithms ; Heuristic methods ; Investments ; Plant layout ; Traveling salesman problem ; Vehicles ; Facility layout ; Facility layout design ; Flexible bay structures ; Generalized traveling salesman problem ; Material flow networks ; Material flow pattern ; Material handling ; Measure of effectiveness ; Materials handling
  7. Source: International Journal of Production Economics ; Volume 193 , 2017 , Pages 713-725 ; 09255273 (ISSN)
  8. URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527317302463