Solving the facility and layout and location problem by ant-colony optimization–meta-heuristic

This paper describes a heuristic algorithm for solving the plant/facility location problem by applying ant-colony optimization meta-heuristic. The facility location problem is discussed, and a mathematical formulation is presented. The problem is then modelled as a quadratic assignment problem. An ant algorithm is developed to solve the problem. The results reveal that the proposed algorithm can be adaptively constructed to solve discrete plant location problems. This has been applied to a set of known test problems and appears to be able to compete with other current solutions with encouraging results.