A Firefly Algorithm Approach for Multirow Facility Layout Problem

The facility layout problem is an optimization problem that makes efficient layouts. Layout design has a prime importance on the performance of manufacturing systems. The facility layout problem (FLP) helps to reduce the material handling costs by a well organized positioning of facilities. The facility layout problems are generally regarded as NP-Hard problems. The different methodologies for solving FLP's can be exact algorithms, heuristics and meta-heuristics. The exact algorithms are generally used when the number of facilities in the layout is up to 16. For large sized FLP's, heuristics were developed to attain near optimal solution in reasonable computation times. In the recent literatures, there is a great focus on biology-inspired meta-heuristic algorithms to find most suitable solutions for FLP's. Firefly Algorithm is a recently developed Meta-heuristic, which represents some of the traits of the firefly behaviour. This paper focuses on the application of firefly algorithm to multi-row facility layout problem with the goal of reducing total material handling cost. A parameter analysis was done and some general FLP's were solved using the algorithm. A comparative study between Genetic Algorithm and Firefly Algorithm was also performed.