Developing a mathematical programming model for dynamic facility layout problem using transportation utilities

The goal of the dynamic facility layout problem is to find the best layout for facilities at a multi period planning horizon so that the total cost of material handling and relocating the facilities is minimized. One of the most important aspects of this issue is to consider the transporters and minimizing material handling time. This paper developed a bi-objective mathematical model which is able to simultaneously minimize the material handling costs between facilities and the cost of rearrangement facilities and material handling time. Due to probabilistic characteristic of the transporters, such as the time of handling operation and existence of the failure, calculating the time required to carry the material using analytical relationships is impossible. Therefore, this paper uses the simulation approach and artificial neural networks. In this approach, a lot of scenarios are generated by combining of variables. Each scenario shows the location of the facilities and how to perform transportation operations in each period. Then each of these scenarios is implemented through computer simulation and simulation results are considered as the response variable. Finally, using input and response variable, an artificial neural network is trained so that it can accurately estimate the time of carrying out the transportation operations. Given that the above problem is a NP-hard; this paper proposes a new Multi-Objective meta heuristic algorithm to optimize the problem and compares the performance of the proposed algorithm with existing algorithms in literature