Recycling Plants Layout Design by Means of an Interactive Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

Facility Layout Design is known to be very important for attaining production efficiency because it directly influences manufacturing costs, lead times, work in process and productivity. Facility Layout problems have been addressed using several approaches. Unfortunately, these approaches only take into account quantitative criteria. However, there are qualitative preferences referred to the knowledge and experience of the designer, which should also be considered in facility layout design. These preferences can be subjective, not known in advance and changed during the design process, so that, it is difficult to include them using a classic optimization approach. For that reason, we propose the use of an Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA) for designing the layout of two real recycling plants taking into consideration subjective features from the designer. The designer's knowledge guides the evolution of the algorithm evaluating facility layouts in each generation adjusting the search to his/her preferen...