Solving operating theater facility layout problem using a Multi-Agent system

Operating Theater Layout Problem (OTLP) has a great impact on the productivity and the efficiency of the health process. While solving OTLP, Real-life Operating Theater (OT) sizes are larger than exact methods capacity, this lead to explore other methods as heuristics, metaheuristics or parallel treatment looking for approximate solutions. In this paper we developed a novel approach using a Multi-Agent (MA) Decision Making System (DMS) based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) for large-sized OTLP with objective of minimizing total traveling costs. The DMS generates exact solutions in reasonable time and gives the final OT layout in a graphic interface.