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The continuous facility layout problem consists of arranging a set of facilities so that no pair overlaps and the total sum of the pairwise connection costs (proportional to the center-to-center rectilinear distance) is minimized. This thesis presents a completely mixed integer semidefinite programming (MISDP) model for the continuous facility layout problem. To begin we describe the problem in detail; discuss the conditions required for a feasible layout; and define quaternary variables. These variables are the basis of the MISDP model. We prove that the model is an exact formulation and a distinction is made between the constraints that semidefinite programming (SDP) optimization software can solve and those that must be relaxed. The latter are called exactness constraints and three possible exactness constraints are shown to be equivalent. The main contribution of this thesis is the theoretical development of a MISDP model that is based on quaternary, as oppose to binary, variables; nevertheless preliminary computational results will be presented for problems with 5 to 20 facilities. The optimal solution is found for problems with 5 and 6 facilities, confirming the validity of the model; and the potential of the model is revealed as a new upper bound is found for an 11-facility problem.

The continuous facility layout problem consists of arranging a set of facilities so that no pair overlaps and the total sum of the pairwise connection costs (proportional to the center-to-center rectilinear distance) is minimized. This thesis presents a completely mixed integer semidefinite programming (MISDP) model for the continuous facility layout problem. To begin we describe the problem in detail; discuss the conditions required for a feasible layout; and define quaternary variables. These variables are the basis of the MISDP model. We prove that the model is an exact formulation and a distinction is made between the constraints that semidefinite programming (SDP) optimization software can solve and those that must be relaxed. The latter are called exactness constraints and three possible exactness constraints are shown to be equivalent. The main contribution of this thesis is the theoretical development of a MISDP model that is based on quaternary, as oppose to binary, variables; nevertheless preliminary computational results will be presented for problems with 5 to 20 facilities. The optimal solution is found for problems with 5 and 6 facilities, confirming the validity of the model; and the potential of the model is revealed as a new upper bound is found for an 11-facility problem.

The first formulation to be examined is a probabilistic version of the set covering problem. The problem can be stated as follows: determine the locations of the minimum number of facilities among a discrete set of feasible location sites in order to assure that the probability each customer is covered by some facility is no less than a specified value. The second problem treated involves the location of a given number of facilities among a discrete set of feasible location sites in order to maximize the minimum probability that a customer is covered by some facility. This problem is a probabilistic formulation of a special case of the discrete space, minimax location problem known as the p-center problem. Thus, the first and second problems can be considered to be complementary problems. Frequently, several measures of overall system effectiveness must be considered simultaneously. This is particularly the case in many public sector location problems. Thus, the third problem treated in the dissertation considers the case in which several objectives are to be optimized collectively. The problem is formulated as a goal programming problem in which the objectives are ranked ordinally. The problems discussed above are formulated probabilistically under the assumption of a discrete solution space. This approach was taken in order to account explicitly for the random variation inherent in the systems of inte~est. Example problems are employed throughout the research to assist in the explanation of each formulation. The emphasis in the research is placed upon a sound formulation of each problem, reduction of the problem to an equivalent but computationally more efficient formulation, and the application of an appropriate procedure in solving each problem. Sensitivity analyses are conducted in order to provide further insight into the specific cause-effect relationships. / Ph. D.

The facility layout design problem is a fundamental optimization problem encountered in many manufacturing and service organizations that was originally formulated in 1963 by Armour & Buffa. This thesis derives a convex programming model, IBIMODEL, that is designed to improve upon the ModCoAR model of Anjos & Vannelli for the facility layout problem with unequal areas. The purpose of IBIMODEL is to find 'good' initial locations for the departments that a second model then uses to produce a detailed solution to the facility layout problem. The proposed model has four ideas behind it: unlike ModCoAR, it does not improve the objective function as the departments start overlapping, it takes into account the aspect ratio requirements, it introduces a systematic approach to making parameter choices, and it uses a new second stage recently proposed by Luo, Anjos & Vannelli to obtain the actual facility layouts. In this way, IBIMODEL efficiently generates a reasonably diverse set of superior solutions that allow the second stage to provide a wide variety of layouts with relatively low aspect ratios and total cost. The proposed methodology was implemented and numerical results are presented on well-known large layout problems from the literature. To demonstrate the potential of the combination of IBIMODEL with Luo, Anjos & Vannelli's model, our results are compared with the best layouts found to date for these well-known large facility layout problems. The results support the conclusion that the propose a methodology consistently produces competitive, and often improved, layouts for large instances when compared with other approaches in the literature.

The facility layout design problem is a fundamental optimization problem encountered in many manufacturing and service organizations that was originally formulated in 1963 by Armour & Buffa. This thesis derives a convex programming model, IBIMODEL, that is designed to improve upon the ModCoAR model of Anjos & Vannelli for the facility layout problem with unequal areas. The purpose of IBIMODEL is to find 'good' initial locations for the departments that a second model then uses to produce a detailed solution to the facility layout problem. The proposed model has four ideas behind it: unlike ModCoAR, it does not improve the objective function as the departments start overlapping, it takes into account the aspect ratio requirements, it introduces a systematic approach to making parameter choices, and it uses a new second stage recently proposed by Luo, Anjos & Vannelli to obtain the actual facility layouts. In this way, IBIMODEL efficiently generates a reasonably diverse set of superior solutions that allow the second stage to provide a wide variety of layouts with relatively low aspect ratios and total cost. The proposed methodology was implemented and numerical results are presented on well-known large layout problems from the literature. To demonstrate the potential of the combination of IBIMODEL with Luo, Anjos & Vannelli's model, our results are compared with the best layouts found to date for these well-known large facility layout problems. The results support the conclusion that the propose a methodology consistently produces competitive, and often improved, layouts for large instances when compared with other approaches in the literature.

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The facility layout problem (FLP) is one of the most important and challenging problems in both the operations research and industrial engineering research domains. In FLP research, the continuous-representation-based FLP can consider all possible all-rectangular department solutions. Given this flexibility, this representation has become the representation of-choice in FLP research. Much of this research is based on a methodology of mixed integer programming (MIP) models. However, these MIP-FLP models can only solve problems with a limited number of departments to optimality due to a large number of binary variables used in the models to prevent departments from overlapping. Our research centers around the sequence-pair representation, a concept that originated in the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design literature. We show that an exhaustive search of the sequence-pair solution space will result in finding the optimal layout of the MIP-FLP and that every sequence-pair solution is binary-feasible in the MIP-FLP. Based on this fact, we propose a methodology that combines the sequence-pair and MIP-FLP model to efficiently solve large continuous-representation-based FLPs. Our heuristic approach searches the sequence-pair solution space and then use the sequence-pair representation to simplify and solve the MIPFLP model. Based on this methodology, we systematically study the different aspects of the FLP throughout this dissertation. As the first contribution of this dissertation, we present a genetic algorithm based heuristic, SEQUENCE, that combines the sequence-pair representation and the most recent MIPFLP model to solve the all-rectangular-department continuous-representation-based FLP. Numerical experiments based on different sized test problems from both the literature and industrial applications are provided and the solutions are compared with both the optimal solutions and the solutions from other heuristics to show the effectiveness and efficiency of our heuristic. For eleven data sets from the literature, we provide solutions better than those previously found. For the FLP with fixed departments, many sequence-pairs become infeasible with respect to the fixed department location and dimension restrictions. As our second contribution, to address this difficulty, we present a repair operator to filter the infeasible sequence-pairs with respect to the fixed departments. This repair operator is integrated into SEQUENCE to solve the FLP with fixed departments more efficiently. The effectiveness of combining SEQUENCE and the repair operator for solving the FLP with fixed departments is illustrated through a series of numerical experiments where the SEQUENCE solutions are compared with other heuristics' solutions. The third contribution of this dissertation is to formulate and solve the FLP with an existing aisle structure (FLPAL). In many industrial layout designs, the existing aisle structure must be taken into account. However, there is very little research that has been conducted in this area. We extend our research to further address the FLPAL. We first present an MIP model for the FLPAL (MIP-FLPAL) and run numerical experiments to test the performance of the MIP-FLPAL. These experiments illustrate that the MIP-FLPAL can only solve very limited sized FLPAL problems. Therefore, we present a genetic algorithm based heuristic, SEQUENCE-AL, to combine the sequence-pair representation and MIP-FLPAL to solve larger-sized FLPAL problems. Different sized data sets are solved by SEQUENCE-AL and the solutions are compared with both the optimal solutions and other heuristics' solutions to show the effectiveness of SEQUENCE-AL. The fourth contribution of this dissertation is to formulate and solve the FLP with non-rectangular-shaped departments. Most FLP research focuses on layout design with all rectangular-shaped departments, while in industry there are many FLP applications with non-rectangular-shaped departments. We extend our research to solve the FLP with nonrectangular-shaped departments. We first formulate the FLP with non-rectangular-shaped departments (FLPNR) to a MIP model (MIP-FLPNR), where each non-rectangular department is partitioned into rectangular-shaped sub-departments and the sub-departments from the same department are connected according to the department's orientation. The effect of different factors on the performance of the MIP-FLPNR is explored through a series of numerical tests, which also shows that MIP-FLPNR can only solve limited-sized FLPNR problems. To solve larger-sized FLPNR problems, we present a genetic algorithm based heuristic, SEQUENCE-NR, along with two repair operators based on the mathematical properties of the MIP-FLPNR to solve the larger-sized FLPNR. A series of numerical tests are conducted on SEQUENCE-NR to compare the SEQUENCE-NR solutions with both the optimal solutions and another heuristic's solutions to illustrate the effectiveness of SEQUENCE-NR. As the first systematic research study on a methodology that combines the sequence-pair representation and the MIP-based FLP, this dissertation addresses different types of continuous-representation based facility layout design problems: from block layout design with and without fixed departments to re-layout design with an existing aisle structure, and from layout design with all-rectangular-shaped departments to layout design with arbitrary non-rectangular-shaped departments. For each type of layout design problem, numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of our specifically designed family of sequence-pair and MIP-based heuristics. As a result, better solutions than those previously found are provided for some widely used data sets from the literature and some new datasets based on both the literature and industrial applications are proposed for the first time. Furthermore, future research that continues to combine the sequence-pair representation and the MIP-FLP model to solve the FLP is also discussed, indicating the richness of this research domain. / Ph. D.

En el proceso de diseño e las construcciones industriales, es de vital importancia conocer cual es la ubicación óptima de las diferentes áras de trabajo que conforman un proceso de fabricación, así como de las instalaciones y servicios auxiliares. El problema de distribución en planta (Facilities Layout Problem, FLP) integra a todas las actividades industriales y se ha convertido desde los años 60 en uno de los problemas clásicos de optimización combinatoria, en el que trabajan multiutd de investigadores a nivel internacional. Hasta los años 90, el enfoque que se realizaba del problema era básicamente un enfoque monobjetivo, en el que se primaba fundamentalmente la minimización del coste de transporte de material o personas entre las diferentes áreas productivas o de servicios. Para ello se han venido empleando diferentes técnicas de optimización heurística, que persiguen minimizar el tiempo de cálculo y facilitar la búsqueda de mínimos, aunque sean locales, pues el espacio de soluciones es tan grande, que es difícil garantizar la existencia de un mínimo global del problema. No obstante, el criterio de coste no es el único que se debe considerar en este tipo de planteamientos, pues existen otra serie de indicadores que son de vital importancia, para garantizar que la solución propuesta tiene un nivel de desarrollo tecnológico con la aparición de equipos y programas informáticos más desarrollados, han prosperado las aproximaciones multiobjetivos al problema de distribución en planta. Entre los objetivos principales del presente trabajo se encuentran; la realización de un estado del arte de los indicadores que se han empleado en la bibliografía para la resolución en planta, obteniendo un conjunto de indicadores independientes y suficientes que puedan ser empleados en la obtención de distribuciones en planta óptimas. Se investigará si es necesario definir algún nuevo indicador que cubra los objetivos fundamentales de la distribución en planta establecidos por distintos autores. Una vez seleccionados los indicadores se propone una técnica de optimización multiobjetivo basada en un algoritmo de recocido simulado (Simulated Annealing). Finalmente se presentan los resultados de los experimentos realizados, empleando la técnica de optimización multiobjetivo propuesta, sobre un problema ampliamente utilizado en la bibliografía, el propuesto por Armour y Buffa de 20 actividades. Se obtienen las fronteras de Pareto para diferentes bicriterios, introduciendo puntos que completan las existentes hasta la actualidad, estudiando la posibilidad de extender la optimización a 3 indicadores. / Montalva Subirats, JM. (2011). Optimización multiobjetivo de la distribución en planta de procesos industriales. Estudio de objetivos [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/11147

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