A closed loop based facility layout design using a cuckoo search algorithm

Facility layout problems (FLPs) are design problems that involve determining the most favorable arrangement of facilities in a given space. The closed loop layout problem (CLLP) is an FLP that employs a closed loop guided configuration. This type of layout is commonly discussed when designing a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The CLLP is concerned with determining the efficient arrangement of manufacturing cells on a central loop based material handling system. Because the material flow between cells must pass through the loop path, distance is not measured in the conventional manner (i.e. the rectilinear or Euclidean distance). The problem is more complicated than a generic FLP because there are additional constraints that restrict cell shape and orientation as well as the positions of the pick-up and drop-off points. In this study, we propose a random-key and cuckoo search (CS) based approach to solve the CLLP. CS is a rather recently developed algorithm, and it has not yet been applied to FLPs in the literature. To evaluate the present algorithm, computational experiments are conducted using benchmark problems from a previous study. The obtained results show the remarkable performance of the proposed approach. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.