The facility layout problem

Various formulations of the facility layout problem and the algorithms for solving this problem are presented. Twelve heuristic algorithms are compared on the basis of their performance with respect to eight test problems commonly used in the literature. Certain issues related to the facility layout problem and some aspects of the machine layout problem in flexible manufacturing systems are also presented. An attempt has been made to include almost all optimal and suboptimal algorithms which solve the facility layout problem. Branch and bound algorithms, construction algorithms, improvement algorithms and graph theoretic algorithms are examples of some classes of algorithms included in this survey.