Ph.D. Tezi Görüntüleme

      Facility layout is a clasicial industrial engineering problem. Good layout will help any company to improve its business performance. For this reason, layout in any enterprise is very important.

       In this study, machine layout problem in a furniture production plant was investigated . Layout process was done in the furniture for 8 different furniture products based on production process of the products in the furniture plant. For this purpose, the pieces of the selected products and the routes in which they were processed were determined. Flow matrix was determined for potential production alternatives of these products. Central coordinate points of the machines used to produce these products in the plant were determined and distances among the machines calculated based on these coordinates. Two different algorithms were used to solve the layout problem. One of the algorithms is Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) and the other one is Tabu Search (TS) heuristic.

      Facility layout problem in the selected plant was optimally solved by QAP for different potential production of selected products. For the same potential production, facility layout problem was solved by TS heuristic with different tabu list size and the number of iteration. Optimal or near optimal solutions were generated using TS for the facility layout problem. Solutions with these algorithms were evaluated according to locations of machines and total material handling distances required for the production of these products.

      A new alternative layout was generated, which decrease total material handling distances to produce these products. Based on the layout of the machines, total material handling distance was reduced about 18%.

      Keywords: Facility layout, Quadratic assignment problem, Tabu search, Furniture