Solving facility layout problems using Flexible Bay Structure representation and Ant System algorithm

摘要

This paper proposes an Ant System (AS) algorithm for solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems (UA-FLPs) using Flexible Bay Structure (FBS) representation. In addition, an improvement to the FBS representation is made when solving problems with empty spaces. The method is extensively tested using numerous problem instances taken from the literature and overall, encouraging results are obtained.