Optimization Modeling for Multi Objectives Function of a Plant Layout
Author(s):
Mustafa M. Mansour†, Linha M. Jaber‡
Affiliation(s):
Middle Technical University, Institute of Technology-Baghdad, Iraq
‡ Ministry of Education, Baghdad, Iraq
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This work is related with the problem of the facility layout, the layout problem is a multi-objective function considering the kind of conflicting objectives, where the objective function is dealing with the allocation of best place to each process department and two considerations are taking into account; one is to increase the adjacencies that required between departments, and the other is the cost reduction of the work-flow between them. Tabu-search model has developed to improve the layout of the water pump factory .In order to determine the best location for the process departments by focusing on the two objectives, the minimization of the workflow cost, and the maximization of the total closeness rating relationships among the process departments by reinforcement of their tasks interaction. The methodology of this work is to allocate the existing areas of factory departments within the available dimensions of the total facility and the remaining areas is divided into a number of dummy departments that the operational departments could be extended on it by using the flexible bay structure that has been suggested for re-design of facility .In this study, ten trials were chosen since there were no violations of the constraint of rectangular shape, and then compared through the improvement percentage value. Where, the higher value with no violation of all constraints, the resulted layouts has considered as the best optimal solution. The 7th and 3rd trials were chosen as the best optimal, where divided into two Bays instead of three and all departments have near optimal rectangular shapes. The best optimal one which equals (59.303), that means more closeness between department and less numbers of flows (less cost) in optimal layout, compared with the previous layout improvement percentage.