A Multi-Objective Approach to Facility Layout Problem by Genetic search Algorithm and Electre Method

摘要

Facility layout problem consists in determining the optimal position of a set of departments within an available area. Classical approaches to layout design problem tend to maximize the efficiency of layout measured by the handling cost related to the interdepartmental flow and to the distance among the departments.However several conflicting objectives should be considered and multi-objective approaches, recently proposed, in most cases lead to the maximization of a single utility function, which is a weighted sum of the score functions related to the aspects considered. The difficulty of normalizing the objective functions and of quantifying the weights is however well known. In this paper the optimal layout is determined in two subsequent steps: in the first step the Pareto-optimal solutions are determined by employing a multi-objective constrained genetic algorithm and the subsequent selection of the optimal solution is carried out by means of the multi-criteria decision making procedure Electre. Four different aspects of the problem are taken into account: handling cost, adjacency and distance requests between departments and aspect ratio of departments.