A ‘fuzzy’ heuristic for the quadratic assignment formulation to the facility layout problem

This paper describes a fuzzy set theory based heuristic for the quadratic assignment formulation of the facility layout problem with single/multiple objectives. A heuristic procedure is presented, that involves the assignment of facilities to locations to generate an initial solution and then possibly improving the solution through shifting of facilities as per the scope for improvement identified during the evaluation of the generated solution. The effectiveness of the heuristic, in terms of quality of solution, is illustrated with a numerical example. Finally, a set of examples, previously used by various researchers, are solved and the results are compared with the optimal solution or with the ‘best’ solution of other known heuristics. The results of comparison indicate that the proposed procedure performs well in terms of quality of solution.