An Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm to Solve the Single Row Layout Problem with Clearances

摘要

The single row layout problem (SRLP) is defined as the optimal arrangement of n machines with varying length along a straight line in order to minimize the weighted sum of distances between all machine pairs. In this paper, an artificial bee colony (ABC) metaheuristic is proposed to solve the SRLP considering sequence-dependent, asymmetric clearances for the first time. The algorithm is evaluated on several benchmark instances selected from literature as well as random generated ones involving up to n= 60 machines. By comparing the computational results, either to optimal or best known solutions, it is revealed that our ABC performs efficiently, especially for instances with sequence-dependent asymmetric clearances.