Visual facility layout design system

This paper presents an integrated visual facility layout design system to solve layout problems with geometric constraints on a continual planar site. The system employs a tabu search algorithm as the search engine with heuristic neighbourhood control and a manual interference mechanism to obtain good solutions. The Windows®-based system provides layout designers with a friendly environment that can automatically search a good solution aided by the visual inspection function. The visual inspection function is a mechanism embedded in the search process that dynamically displays the improvement status and allows manual adjustment of facility location during the search. The system also serves as a powerful tool for performing ‘what if’ analyses for layout designers.