A New Space Filling Curve for the Layout Problem which Treat Unequal Departments Shapes and Areas.

Abstract

A Space Filling Curve (SFC) has been proposed, which allows for exchange among departments and offers increased flexibility to the optimization process, as a facility layout technique which can treat any departments of unequal area. However little attention has been paid to the department shape in spite of the fact that SFC determines the department shape. The Hilbert Curve (HC) is used as the SFC, but it gives poor estimation of department shape and is not applicable for use in some rectangular buildings. A new SFC is thus developed, which offers better estimation of department shape than SFC based on HC, and applicability for any rectangular building. Numerical results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented SFC.