A Mixed Integer Linear Programming approach for a new form of facility layout problem

This paper aims to study a new form of facility layout problem, in which the building has already been constructed and the specific room layout inside has been determined. Unlike the traditional facility layout problem, what we take into account is how to assign a certain number of rooms to a given number of departments with the purpose of maximizing the utilization rate of the rooms. This is equivalent to minimizing the total difference value between the extra area of different departments after satisfying their required area, thus reducing the space waste. To solve this special combinatorial optimization problem, we develop a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model. The model is solved using commercial software CPLEX12.6. Computational results on several randomly generated instances demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.