Investigating the performance of bees algorithm in solving quadratic assignment problems

One of the issues in the manufacturing industry is designing an arrangement of facilities where the layout can minimise the material-handling cost. This issue is known as a facility layout problem (FLP). To date, bees algorithm has evolved as a new meta-heuristic which was inspired by the food foraging behaviour of honey bees. This paper describes the first application of bees algorithm in solving FLP which has been modelled as quadratic assignment problem (QAP). A new bees algorithm is proposed and formulated, and it is tested using numerous problems taken from QAPLIB – an international renowned database that provides QAP cases. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated in terms of its solution quality and computational time. Furthermore, the solutions generated by the algorithm are compared with the existing best known solutions published in the literature. The experimental results show that the algorithm is very successful in solving small problem instances which have up to 20 facilities.