Simulation-based flexible layout planning considering stochastic effects

Layout planning is an important practical problem for manufacturing companies. In today's market conditions - characterized with continuously changing product portfolio and shortening product lifecycles - frequent reconfiguration is requested if the primary goal for the company is to remain competitive. The key to win customers is to widen the product portfolio and customize the products, however, this leads to the problem that the manufacturing system has to be re-organized several times during its life cycle that requires solving design problems frequently. In the paper, a novel layout planning method is introduced that can be applied efficiently to solve real industrial problems. The method applies automated simulation model building to create the different layouts. It focuses on minimizing the objective function that is specified according to the predefined key performance indicators (KPI). The solution is a hybrid optimization method, in which evaluation of the lay out alternatives is done by simulation and the improvement of the solution is performed by a near-to-optimal search algorithm. The optimization is separated from the simulation model in order to boost the computations. Important advantage of the solution is the efficiency consideration of stochastic parameters that improve the applicability of the results.