An integrated synthetic value of fuzzy judgments and nonlinear programming methodology for ranking the facility layout patterns

In this paper, the goal is to incorporate qualitative criteria in addition to quantitative criteria to facility layout design (FLD) problem. To this end, we present an integrated methodology based on the synthetic value of fuzzy judgments and nonlinear programming (SVFJ–NLP). The facility layout patterns (FLPs) together with their performance measures of total cost of material handling are generated by a computer‐aided layout‐design tool, CRAFT. Also, the performance measures of second quantitative criterion (construction cost of width walls) are calculated by appraising these FLPs. The SVFJ is then applied to collect the performance measures related to qualitative criteria and finally, a non‐linear programming (NLP) model is proposed to solve the FLD. Results obtained from a real case study validate the effectiveness of the proposed model.