The multi-bay manufacturing facility layout problem

The multi-bay manufacturing facility layout problem is concerned with determining the most efficient layout in a facility that is defined by parallel bays, where the bays are connected at one or both ends by an inter-bay material handling system. This problem arises in a wide variety of manufacturing contexts, e.g. heavy manufacturing and the semiconductor industry. The solution methodology is a two-stage procedure: (1) assigning departments to the bays and then (2) determining the layout of each bay. We present our procedure, which is based on mixed-integer programming and dynamic programming, to determine the optimal overall layout under the assumption of one inter-bay material handling system and a linear ordering of departments within the bays. Finally, we illustrate the procedure by solving four example problems. The runtimes to solve these problems highlight the feasibility of using our procedure as a design tool.