"Tabu search heuristics for the dynamic facility layout problem" by Wen-Hsing Liu

Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Industrial and Managements Systems Engineering

Committee Chair

Alan R McKendall, Jr

Abstract

The facility layout dramatically influences the efficiency of material handling within a manufacturing system. In order to ensure optimal performance within a manufacturing system, the facility layout should reflect changes throughout time. However, the static facility layout problem with constant material flows between departments may not be a realistic scenario because a manufacturing facility is a dynamic system that constantly evolves. In other words, product demand constantly changes over time. As a result, the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) considers these changes and is defined as the problem of assigning departments to locations during a multi-period planning horizon such that the sum of the material handling and rearrangement costs is minimized. In this research, tabu search heuristics and a probabilistic tabu search heuristic are developed to solve the DFLP. The proposed tabu search heuristics are a simple tabu search heuristic, a tabu search heuristic with diversification and intensification strategies, and a probabilistic tabu search heuristic. Two data sets taken from the literature are used to test the performances of the proposed heuristics. Computational experiments show that the proposed heuristics out-performed the heuristics presented in the literature with respect to solution quality and computational time.

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