A simulated annealing algorithm for solving the bi-objective facility layout problem

In this article, a bi-objective facility layout problem (BOFLP) is considered by combining the objectives of minimization of the total material handling cost (quantitative) and the maximization of total closeness rating scores (qualitative), with the predetermined weights are assigned to the respective objectives. A simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is proposed to solve the BOFLP, as well as a comparison of SA with the previous works is provided. It is shown that the SA algorithm works better than the previous works; thus proving the fact that the proposed SA algorithm is an efficient method for solving BOFLP. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.