Plant Layout Method Considering Material Handling Cost and Maintainability

This paper presents a method using simulated annealing(SA) and genetic algorithm(GA) to solve the plant layout problem in which the layout is evaluated by material handling cost and maintainability. In the former study about facility layout problem, it was either the minimization of the objeective function consisting of transport cost or the maximization of the objective function consisting of closeness rating. In this paper, both transport cost and maintainability were included in the objective function to be minimized. The plant layout problem, this paper proposes the heuristic procedures to obtain a suboptimal layout solution by combining SA with GA. From the simulation by computer, it concluded that the method which SA is combined with GA is more efficient than the method which utilizes SA and GA independently.