Facility layout objective functions and robust layouts

In this paper the authors examine the adjacency-based, distance-based, and weighted-criteria facility layout objective functions in an attempt to relate them to actual layout costs, which are typically dependent on material handling costs. As a result of this examination, they develop an objective function based on a basic material handling cost structure. The authors then show that this objective function is a generalization of the traditional weighted objective. Since specifying weights may not be an exact process, we explore the impact of imperfect weighting-value information on solution quality. In the process, they illustrate with test problems from the literature that robust solutions-good solutions as measured by more than one set of weights-can be found with a simple procedure we call the robust layout method. This leads us to the general conclusion that using imperfect weighting-value information while the authors generate the layouts is better than using complete weighting-value information only after they generate the layouts.