A tabu search heuristic for the single row layout problem with shared clearances

The single row layout problem is a common and well-studied practical facility layout problem. The problem seeks the arrangement of a fixed number of facilities along one row that minimizes the objective of total material handling cost. In this paper, a single row layout problem with shared clearance between facilities is proposed. The shared additional clearance may be considered on one or both sides of each facility. To solve this problem tabu search is combined with a heuristic rule to solve problems of realistic size. Tabu search is used to find the sequence of facilities while the heuristic rule is determines the additional clearance for each facility. The proposed solution approach is applied to several problem instances involving 10, 20 and 30 facilities, and is compared against a popular mathematical programming solver (CPLEX). Computational results show that our approach is able to obtain high quality solutions and outperforms CPLEX under limited computational time for problems of realistic sizes.