A new optimizer for the facility layout problem

Facility layout problem is one of the truly difficult combinatorial optimization problems that remain unsolved. The task is to assign facilities to locations in a manner so as to minimize a total cost function. In this paper, the authors propose a new global optimization technique, which makes combined use of evolutionary programming and simulating annealing. Experimental results for the standard benchmark problems are reported and the results show that the authors proposed algorithm compares favorably with other heuristic algorithms.