Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Appraising redundancy in facility layout
AU - Zhao, Yifei
AU - Wallace, Stein William
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Introducing redundancy into facility layout designs reduces material handling costs by shortening the total distance travelled by materials and tools, since redundancy allows for shorter flow routes. In our setting, jobs and volumes (demands) are random, and machines have limited capacities. We present a model for determining which machine types should be duplicated (i.e. having more copies than necessary), given the number of extra positions available in the facility. The model is naturally an extension of the quadratic assignment model, and hence very hard, if not impossible, to solve exactly for even moderate problem dimensions. A myopic approach is proposed. We show numerically that the myopic approach is valid, before we, qualitatively, based on the approach, describe a decision-rule determining a good choice of redundant machine types. This very simple description produces the optimal choice of redundant machine types in most situations. In this way, our results add to the understanding of the problem itself, not just to its solution.
AB - Introducing redundancy into facility layout designs reduces material handling costs by shortening the total distance travelled by materials and tools, since redundancy allows for shorter flow routes. In our setting, jobs and volumes (demands) are random, and machines have limited capacities. We present a model for determining which machine types should be duplicated (i.e. having more copies than necessary), given the number of extra positions available in the facility. The model is naturally an extension of the quadratic assignment model, and hence very hard, if not impossible, to solve exactly for even moderate problem dimensions. A myopic approach is proposed. We show numerically that the myopic approach is valid, before we, qualitatively, based on the approach, describe a decision-rule determining a good choice of redundant machine types. This very simple description produces the optimal choice of redundant machine types in most situations. In this way, our results add to the understanding of the problem itself, not just to its solution.
KW - facility layout
KW - stochastic demand
KW - redundancy
U2 - 10.1080/00207543.2015.1030041
DO - 10.1080/00207543.2015.1030041
M3 - Journal article
VL - 54
SP - 665
EP - 679
JO - International Journal of Production Research
JF - International Journal of Production Research
SN - 0020-7543
IS - 3
ER -