Integrated slicing tree approach for solving the facility layout problem with input and output locations based on contour distance

The designer of a plant layout faces mutually dependent subproblems that are traditionally solved in a sequential process. In this paper, a slicing tree based parallel tempering heuristic is used to solve the facility layout problem, including the location of the material handling points of each facility. To determine the input and output points on the perimeters of the departments for a given layout, two heuristic methods are presented and compared to an integer linear programming approach. The shortest paths along the perimeter of the departments are used to calculate the distance of the material flow paths from output to input points. The methods are embedded in a superordinate parallel tempering algorithm, which represents a novel approach to solving the facility layout problem. To compare the efficiency of the superordinate parallel tempering algorithm, two variants of the variable neighbourhood search are implemented as well. The effectiveness of the approach in terms of the objective function value is shown by comparing the results to those in the literature.