A continuous approach to considering uncertainty in facility design

Authors:
Bryan A. Norman;Alice E. Smith
Affiliations:
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA;Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn University, AL
Venue:
Computers and Operations Research
Year:
2006

Citing 2
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Abstract

This paper presents a formulation of the facilities block layout problem which explicitly considers uncertainty in material handling costs on a continuous scale by use of expected values and standard deviations of product forecasts. This formulation is solved using a genetic algorithm meta-heuristic with a flexible bay construct of the departments and total facility area. It is shown that depending on the attitude of the decision-maker towards uncertainty, the optimal design can change significantly. Furthermore, designs can be optimized directly for robustness over a range of uncertainty that is pre-specified by the user. This formulation offers a computationally tractable and intuitively appealing alternative to previous stochastic layout formulations that are based on discrete scenario probabilities.