Golden section search and hybrid tabu search-simulated annealing for layout design of unequal-sized facilities with fixed input and output points

The facility layout problem involves the positioning of facilities in order to minimize the total travel distance. This study deals with a layout design of unequal-sized facilities with fixed input and output points. Because a mixed integer-programming model cannot solve large-sized problems in a reasonable amount of computational time, a heuristic algorithm composed of a placing method based on golden section search and hybrid tabu search-simulated annealing is developed. In the placing method, facilities are sequentially arranged by a given sequence, and the optimal coordinates of facilities are determined using the golden section search. To find the sequence that yields the minimum total travel distance, the hybrid tabu search-simulated annealing is developed. Computational experiments show that the proposed algorithm generates the optimal layout result for test problems with fewer than six facilities and improves the best-known results from Xiao et al.(2013) in a shorter time.