4th IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering
Key Bridge Marriott, Washington DC, USA
August 23-26, 2008
A Hybrid ACO/PSO Heuristic to solve Single Row
Layout Problem
Y.T. Teo
School of Engineering
Monash University Sunway Campus
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
yuangteck@gmail.com
AbstractIn this paper, a hybrid ACO/ PSO heuristic to
solve single row layout problem is proposed. As opposed to
previous researches, the clearances and size of machines are
treated as variables by using non-linear 0-1 mathematical
model adopted from literature. ACO is used as constructive
heuristic with a new pheromone update developed to achieve
better performance on proposed algorithm. PSO, on the other
hand, is used as an improvement heuristic to guide the ants to
reach the best solution. To further improve the quality of the
solutions, 2-Opt local search is added. The proposed hybrid
ACO/PSO heuristic is evaluated with various sets of problems
available in the literature, and the results are compared
with those reported in the literature.
KeywordsACO, PSO, Single Row Layout, Hybrid.
I. INTRODUCTION
Issues on facilities layout in manufacturing industries
have been a common problem in the past two decades and
are well known among researchers. Optimizing facilities
layout in a manufacturing plant is basically to arrange the
machines in the workshop area with the best or optimized
sequence to increase the performance of the factory.
Researchers have found out that it is possible to reduce the
manufacturing costs to up to 30% by a good arrangement of
machines because it was estimated that 20-50% of the costs
are due to the handling of work pieces [1]. Therefore,
looking into such high percentage of return, many researches
had done to provide the best solution to the problem.
Flexible manufacturing system(FMS) is one of the
automated manufacturing system where production system
are formed by a set of automated machines and flexible
material-handling system such as robots, automated guided
vehicle and others. Due to the incorporation of advanced
material-handling system, facility layout in FMS has
changed significantly. The enthusiasm of arranging these
facilities in the right order has increased with the
implementation of FMS.
Y. T. Teo was with School of Engineering, Monash University
Sunway Campus, Malaysia. This work was done when he was with
Monash University Sunway Campus. He is presently with Western Digital
Malaysia (E-mail: yuangteck@gmail.com).
S. G. Ponnambalam is with School of Engineering, Monash University
Sunway Campus, Malaysia. (Phone: +60-3-55146207; Email:
sgponnambalam@eng.monash.edu.my).
978-1-4244-2023-0/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE.
S.G. Ponnambalam
School of Engineering
Monash University Sunway Campus
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
sgponnambalam@eng.monash.edu.my
The commonly used machine layouts in FMS are single
row layout, double row layout, loop layout, cluster layout
and circular layout. Hassan [2] pointed out that approaches
suggested in past literature were mostly dealt with block
layout and are not suitable to be implemented in new types
of layout in FMS, such as single row layout. Therefore, it is
essential to develop new models and solution methodologies
to suit the modern manufacturing systems.
This paper emphasizes on developing a new solution
methodology to solve the single row layout problem. A
hybrid ant colony optimization (ACO)/particle swarm
optimization (PSO) is proposed in this paper to determine
the best arrangement of machines in a single row layout
suitable for FMS. The performance of the proposed
algorithm is evaluated with a set of problems available in the
literature and the proposed hybrid ACO/PSO performs better
over the models reported in the literature. The mathematical
model proposed by Solimanpur et al. [3] is adopted in this
project which is suitable for FMS environment.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Single row layout is well known as a NP-complete
problem [4]. The problem is not as simple as permutations of
a fixed number of machines, but certain criteria also needed
to be satisfied in the operation sequence of all the products.
Furthermore, if one would like to generate the permutation
for a large problem with 30 machines, it would take
generations to find out all the possible combinations before
solving the problem itself. Accurate mathematical solutions
do not exist for such problem [5], therefore many heuristics
are proposed to solve single row layout problem. Most of the
past literature formulated the single row layout problem as
Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). QAP is one of the
combinatorial optimization problems branching from
optimization or operation research in mathematics,
particularly facilities location problem [6].
Kumar et. al.[7] suggested a constructive (greedy)
heuristic which looked into the strong relationships between
mutually distinct pairs of facilities, minimizing the material
handling cost. They did not take into account the dimension
of the facilities in the layout construction. Due to QAP
formulation, the size of the locations are predefined as equi-
distant which lie on a straight line. Braglia [8] used the
backtracking minimization as the objective of the problem.
He adopted the mathematical formulation found in [9] and
597
implemented the Simulated Annealing (SA)-based heuristic
proposed by Kouvelis and Chiang [10] as the basis of the
proposed solution and added Genetic Algorithm (GA) to
improve the quality of the solution.
Braglia [11] considering traveling time instead of
traveling distances because material handling devices
(MHD) generally are not consistent in velocity and proposed
a constructive heuristic algorithm based on NEH heuristic
which was developed for the flow shop scheduling problem
by Nawaz et. al.[12].
c) There are no duplication of machines allowed in a
single complete solution.
d) The precedence constraint between machines also
will not be considered.
e) The solutions created are regardless of the input or
output of the parts from the system, therefore
minimizing the complexity of the problem.
IV. NOTATIONS:
The notations used are explained in TABLE I.

Djellab and Gourgand [13] proposed an iterative TABLE I. NOTATIONS

construction procedure which consists of a number of stages Notations Description
to minimize the total time required by MHD to transport the M Total number of machines or locations
part types between machines. fij Number of trips from machinei to machinej
Ficko et. al.[5] proposed a genetic algorithm to solve the f(h)(l) Number of trips from machinei at locationh to machinej
at locationl
single and multiple rows layout problems with variable
Li Length of the machinei
distance between machines to minimize the distance
L(h) Length of the machinei at locationh
between them. They tested their model with an example of
sij Clearance required between machinei and machinej
FMS with 14 devices, but they did not include any
s(h)(l) Clearance required between machinei at locationh and
description on the problem itself which restricted us from machinej at locationl
comparing. dhl Distance between the centroids of locationh and
locationl.
An ant algorithm was proposed by Solimanpur et. al.[4]
il Heuristic information of placing machinei to locationl
for he single row layout problem. They presented a non-
il Pheromone trail of placing machinei to locationl
linear 0-1 mathematical model for the NP-hard problem
pilk Probability information of antk to place machinei at
which is more suitable for single row layout problem in locationl
FMS environment. Ptk Position of particlek in PSO at time t
Hassan [2] reviewed the formulations and solution Vtk Velocity of particlek in PSO at time t
methodologies for the machine layout problems of all the N Number of ants or particles
literatures from year 1963 to 1992. He presented the design A_stop ACO termination condition
issue of machine layout problems and also the optimization P_stop PSO termination condition
approach for developing the machine layout. The potential , Weightage for local pheromone update
Weightage for global pheromone update
areas for research in the machine layout problem are also
Importance of pheromone change in selection
presented. Singh and Sharma [14] presented the state of the probability equation
art review of papers on facility layout problems. They
C0,C1, C2 Parameters used in PSO velocity update equation.
identified the trend towards using meta-heuristics to solve
facility layout problem. Their survey includes the research
reported using meta-heuristics and other approaches V. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION
published from past two decades. They concluded that future The non-linear 0-1 mathematical formulation needed in
researches could be developing meta-heuristic models for this paper is adopted from the Solimanpur et. al.[3] as
the facility layout problem. detailed below.
It is identified that exploiting the features of the swarm M 1 M
l 1 l 1 L L (1)
intelligent based approach is not explored in solving single Min ( f (h )(l ) + f (l )(h ) ) d (h )(l ) d (h )(l ) = Lt + s(t )(t +1) + (h ) + (l )
h=1 l =h+1 t =h+1 t =h 2 2
row layout problem. Hence, there is a scope of developing
hybrid swarm based intelligent model for single row layout s.t.
problem. where is denoted as the particular permutation and is
III. ASSUMPTIONS AND CONSTRAINTS the set of all permutation. (h) represents the machine at
location h in permutation .
The assumptions presented in the mathematical model
are as follows: VI. PROPOSED HYBRID ACO/PSO HEURISTICS
a) The machines are assumed to be in rectangle shape Many heuristic, meta-heuristic or even exact solution
with different sizes. Distances between machines are methods had been proposed to solve the single row layout
measured with respect to the centroids of each problem in the past two decades. For a conventional
machine. heuristic search, the algorithm is simple, which an initial
b) The clearance required between machines is variable state is defined in a solution space and search is performed
where different pair of machines have different through the neighborhood to find the optimum point.
clearance requirement. However, the draw back of this conventional heuristic search

598
is that it is easily trapped in local optima, or the solution may
be revisited in every cycle. Therefore, meta-heuristics comes
into action where it allows more diverse search in the
solution space to prevent from being trapped into local
optima.
In this paper, two meta-heuristic algorithms are used to
solve the single row layout problem, which are ant colony
optimization (ACO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO).
The two optimization tools are hybridized to form a new
algorithm to solve the problem. The proposed hybrid
optimization tool is split into two stages, where ACO is used
in the first stage followed by PSO used in the second stage.
Typically the assumptions made are, the locations are known
in advance and the distance plus clearance are all predefined
numerical value or some treated them as equi-distance. No
duplication of machines are allowed in a single solution,
therefore a machine that has already been assigned to a
particular location cannot be assigned to other locations.
In addition to ACO and PSO, a 2-opt local search is
applied to further improve the quality of the solutions. A 2-
opt local search which is also known as pairwise interchange
heuristic is basically swapping two machines at a time. After
each swap, the solution is evaluated again and compares the
new objective function value (OFV) with the current best
OFV. If a better solution is found, the current best solution
will be replaced.
A. Stepwise Procedures of Proposed Hybrid ACO/PSO
Heuristics
The proposed solution can be described in 2 stages with
13 steps as shown below:
1. Initialization: N, A_stop, P_stop, , , , C0, C1, C2,
and initial pheromone il(0)
Stage 1
2. An ant is randomly placed on the set of machines.
3. The ant will select the next feasible machine to place
at the next location based on the probability
information shown in equation 8. Repeat Step 3 until
a complete solution is constructed.
4. Update the pheromone trail using the local
pheromone update shown in equation 5.
5. Repeat step 2 to 4 for N ants to generate a swarm of
particles.
Stage 2
6. Evaluate a particle from the swarm, the complete
solution generated by the ant.
7. Update the velocity attached to that particle based on
the equation 10.
8. Update the position of the particle using the updated
velocity in Step 7.
9. Apply 2-opt local search to that particle to improve
the quality of the solution.
10. Repeat Step 6 to 9 for N numbers of times.
11. Repeat Step 6 to 10 until P_stop is met, otherwise
proceed to Step 12.
12. Update the best result obtained so far and the
pheromone trail using global pheromone update
shown in equation 6 to encourage the ants to
599
generate the solutions closer to the best solution
found.
13. Repeat Step 2 to Step 12 until the A_stop is met.
B. Ant Colony Optimization:
ACO is an improved version of the Ant System which
was developed by Colorni, Dorigo and Maniezzo in
1991[15,16]. This algorithm simulates the behavior of the
ants in the real world.
Ants travel in accordance to the pheromone intensities of
the trails. Each ant will deposit some substances call
pheromone along the path they have passed through. This
causes a positive feedback loop where the pheromone trails
increases whenever more ants passed through. This allow
other ants to follow their route and eventually the better
route will have more pheromone deposited and all the ants
will favor that particular route to reach their food source
from their nest or vice versa.
1) Construction of complete feasible solution:
ACO is used as the initial feasible solution constructor in
the proposed ACO/PSO heuristic.
Initially, each ant is placed randomly on different
machines at the starting point. Then the ants will construct
the solution based on the probability of placing the next
machine onto the next location. For example, there are 5
machines in a single row layout problem; antk is placed at
machine1 at location1. Then the ant will select the next
machine from the list (2, 3, 4, 5) and place the machine to
next location, location2. This situation is denoted by place(i ,
l), where the machinei will be placed at locationl. For this
case, i takes a value from 2 to 5 and l is 2. The machine is
placed in the location based on the probability information
calculated. Higher the probability the higher chance of
placing that machine to a location under considerations.
Three lists will be attached to each ant where first list is
the machines that the ant need to assign (for feasible solution
construction), second list is the locations that the ant is going
to place the machine, and lastly the third list is a list that
shows the place selected.
Continue with the example mentioned above, the ant is
placed initially at machine1, therefore List1 and List2 will
have [2,3,4,5]. List3 will have [place(1,1)] at the moment.
Lets say if the ant choose machine3 to place at location2 now,
then List1 will have [2,4,5], List2 will be [3,4,5] and List3 will
be [place(1,1), place(3,2)]. By implementing the lists as
mentioned, only feasible solutions are constructed.
2) Heuristic Information:
Each ant in ACO can include some heuristic information
while assigning the machine to the locations specified. In our
convention, 12 is denoted as the heuristic information
pertaining to place(1,2), or in other words the desirability of
the ant of placing machine1 to location2. In this paper, the
heuristic information is updated accordingly whenever a new
machine is placed in the next location successfully. The
heuristic information is measured based on the partial
contribution of the place to the objective function. This
means the smaller the distances traveled by MHD between
the assigned machines, the better the desirability of the
place, because is a function of inverse distance. The
partial contribution of the move was adopted from
Solimanpur et. al.[3].
Partial contribution of place(i,l) to the fitness function:
l 1
( f ( ) + f i (h ) ) d hl
h i
h 1
where
l 1 l 1
d (h )(l ) = L ( ) + s ( ) (
u = h +1
u
u =h
u u +1) +
(l) = i
Therefore the heuristic information pertained to place(i,l)
is formulated as below:
1 The ratio is then minus off by 1 to obtain only the decimal
il =
l 1
( f ( )
h 1
h i + f i (h ) ) d hl
The number 1 added with the partial fitness in
denominator is to avoid division by 0.
3) Pheromone Trail Update:
There are two kinds of pheromone trail updates:
a) Local pheromone trail update
b) Global pheromone trail update
4) Local Pheromone Update
Local pheromone trail update will be applied after an ant
has constructed a complete solution.
z that it reduces the computational effort of pheromone update.
il (1 ) il + il
z 6) Selection Probability
where il is the pheromone trail pertained to place(i,l)
Local pheromone trail update is to apply pheromone
evaporation to the pheromone trail (First term of equation 5),
however the evaporation rate is reduced based on the fitness
of the current solution compare with the best result found so
far. z* denoted the fitness of the best solution has found so
far, and z is denoted as the fitness of current solution
generated. The ratio is then multiplied with the pheromone
trail so as to replace the pheromone trails that have been
evaporated in the first term. This is to guide the ants to move
towards the global optimum solution. The nearer the fitness
of the current solution generated is to the best found so far,
the lower the pheromone trail is being evaporated. Besides,
the evaporation enables greater exploration in the solution
space by the ants without compromising the possibility of
losing track to the global optimum point. in the equation is
a parameter which determines how important is the
pheromone change in local pheromone update as well as
controlling the rate of evaporation. Higher will cause the
pheromone trail to evaporate at higher rate and emphasize
more on the second term. Local pheromone update is
executed every time a complete solution is constructed, or in
other words, all the ants will execute local pheromone
update.
5) Global pheromone update
In contrast to local pheromone update, only one ant is
allowed to execute global pheromone trail update, which is
the best ant that constructed the best solution among the
constructed solutions
(2)
il il + ilBS (6)
where
L (h ) Li
2
+
2
(3) z
ilBS = * 1 il (7)
z
z is denoted as the average fitness of all the solutions
generated, or in our case the average fitness of all the
particles in the swarm and z* is the best fitness found so far.
(4)
numbers. The change of pheromone in global pheromone
update is formulated such that it is a function of the original
pheromone trail. This can eliminate the problem on either
the first term dominating the second term in equation 6 or
vice versa. By using the pheromone update in equation 7, it
encourages the best ant to deposit more pheromone on the
trails if the average result is further away from the best found
result, minimizing the gap between the best fitness. For
example, if z is much larger than z*, this will increase the
pheromone deposition due to the higher of il . However,
BS
if the best found fitness is somehow nearer to the average
fitness of all solutions, il will have a smaller value,
BS
which in turns less pheromone will be deposited to the
pheromone trails. The advantage of global updating rule is
(5)
The probability of assigning which machine to a location
depends on two parameters, the heuristic information il,
and the trail level il. The proposed ACO obtains the
probability using the equation 8 which is proposed by
Maniezzo [17,18].
il + (1 ) il (8)
pilk = ; i List1
iList ( il + (1 ) il )
1
where List1 contains the set of feasible neighborhood.
An advantage of this equation over the original equation
from Ant System (AS) [17] is that it is a much simpler
operation by using summations instead of multiplications for
combining the heuristic information and pheromone trail.
Besides, only one parameter, is used in the equation.
governs the importance of pheromone trail over the heuristic
information in equation 8.
C. Particle Swarm Optimization
In second stage, PSO is used to improve the solutions
created by the ants in first stage. PSO was originally
designed by Eberhart and Kennedy [19,20,21] which
600
simulates the behavior of living entities that work in a
swarm, such as ants. The basic elements in PSO are position
and velocity. In this context, each solution created by the
ants is represented as one particle. Each particle has a
position or in other words their fitness in the solution space.
Each is then attached with a velocity which the particle will
move towards the direction of the velocity vector pointing
with the distance it specified. The particles will continue
moving and updating the velocity until they reach a common
goal or the optimum solution as all the particles agreed.
Each complete solution constructed in ACO is used as a
particle in PSO. For example, [1,2,4,5,3] representing one
feasible solution refers to a particle. Each particle in PSO is
evaluated based on the objective function and the best
solution is determined based on the position discovered so
far in the iterations, which is called personal best (Pbest).
Then all the particles are compared to identify which particle
has the best solution, or the so called global best (Gbest).
Therefore in each iteration, the velocity of the particle is
recalculated according to the Pbest and Gbest and then
updates the current position of the particle to a new position
according to the calculated velocity. The new position is
calculated using equation 9.
Pt k+1 = Pt k + vt (9)
The velocity is represented as the transposition of the
machines between locations. The length of velocity is
determined by the numbers of transposition presented. For
example, [(1,2), (4,2)] is denoted as a velocity of length 2
and the velocity consists of transposition of location1 with
location2 and location4 with location2.
The velocity update in PSO is shown in equation 10.
( k
vt = C0 vt 1 + C1 rand1 PPBest ) (
Pt k + C2 rand2 PGBest
k
Pt k
(10)
In equation 10, vt is governed by three vectors, which are
previous velocity, vt-1, velocity of current position to
personal best position and lastly the velocity of current
position to global best position. ( PPbest
k
Pt k ) is denoted as
the transposition needed to change from the current position,
Pt k to the personal best, PPbest
k
. ( PPbest
k
Pt k ) is denoted as
the transposition needed to change from the current position,
Pt k to the global best, PGbest
k
. The results for the second set of problem are tabulated in
Each of the vectors consists of transposition and the
length is controlled by the parameters C0, C1, C2 as well as
random number, rand. The random number generated should
lie in the range of 0rand1 for both second and third vector
in the velocity update. All the vectors will be summed up to
form a new velocity vector for position update.
VII. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
Three sets of problems are commonly used by the
researchers to evaluate the performance of their proposed
method. Problem Set 1 by Nugent at. al.[22] consists of eight
problems and the size of the machines are found in Heragu
and Kusiak [23]. Problem Set 2 consists of eight problems
collected from different sources. Problem 2 and 6 are from
Love and Wong [24], problem 3, 4 and 5 are from Simmons
[25] and lastly problem 7 and 8 are from Nugent at. al.[22].
Dimensions of all the machines are from Heragu and Kusiak
[26]. Problem 1 in second set of problem is not considered
for comparison due to insufficient information. The
clearances between pair of machines in problem set 1 are
reported in literature as 0.01, therefore for comparable
results, the clearance, s in equation 1 is also set to 0.01. For
problem set 2, the clearances are set to 0 as reported by
Kumar et. al.[7].
For the third set of problem, the problems are identical to
the problem set 1, but clearances between machines are set
to the distances reported in Nugent at. al.[22]. Due to the
reason that no past papers have ever considered this
assumption before, the results are only comparable with the
results reported in Solimanpur et. al.[3]. The proposed
heuristic is coded in Matlab program and run on a Pentium 4
(Prescott) of 3.36GHz with 1MB L2 cache.
TABLE II shows the results for the first set of problem in
comparison with the results reported in literatures. The time
recorded in the table is the CPU time in seconds. However,
the CPU time recorded for each problem in TABLE II and
TABLE III are not suitable for comparison since the earlier
researches need different computing systems.
For problem set 1, the results for the proposed method as
well as past heuristics are tabulated in TABLE II. All the
other past heuristics in TABLE II were obtained on a Sun
3/260 Computer except method proposed by Solimanpur et.
al.[3] which was obtained on Pentium 3 550MHz PC. The
OFVs in bold show the optimum results for each of the
problem. The results for the proposed hybrid ACO/PSO are
) tabulated in the last column. The proposed ACO/PSO is able
to achieve best results obtained so far.
TABLE II. THE COMPARATIVE RESULTS FOR PROBLEM SET 1
TABLE III. The proposed hybrid ACO/PSO is able to
achieve the best solutions so far reported, except for problem
8. The first problem in problem set 2 is not experimented
due to the incomplete information of the data. The data were
published in a French paper. The reported result for problem
number 8 by Solimanpur ed. al.[3] is extremely low
compared to the other methods. We suspect that this could
be a typo error. We are in correspondence with the authors
for clarification. The proposed method by Heragu and
Kusiak [26] was run on an AMDAHL 5870 Computer.
Heragu and Alfa [27] obtained the CPU time on an VAX
6420 mainframe computer. Kumar[7] tested their proposed
heuristic on a Sun 3/260 computer and Solimanpur et. al.[3]
601
evaluated their proposed method on a Pentium III 550MHz
PC.
TABLE III. THE COMPARATIVE RESULTS FOR PROBLEM SET 2
TABLE IV shows the OFVs and the computational time
in average of five cycles for each of the problem in problem
set 3. The results of the proposed hybrid ACO/PSO in last
column are compared with 2-opt algorithm and algorithm
proposed by Solimanpur et al.[3]. As shown, the proposed
method only hit the optimum results in problem 1, 2, 6 and 8.
However, we see inferiority in solving the other problems.
The proposed hybrid ACO/PSO performs better than a 2-opt
local search in all the problems except problem 4. The
inferiorities are mainly due to the inconsistency of results
obtained in different iteration. Heuristic methods involved
random aspect; results obtained from same sets of
configuration might not be the same even with the same
experimental machines and same environment. Therefore,
the results reported in TABLE IV have yet to be used to
conclude that the method proposed by Solimanpur et al. [3]
performs better than proposed hybrid ACO/PSO.
TABLE IV. THE COMPARATIVE RESULTS FOR PROBLEM SET 3
VIII. CONCLUSION:
A hybrid meta-heuristic by combining ACO and PSO is
proposed to solve the single row layout problem. A 2-opt
local search is also implemented to improve the quality of
the solution. The mathematical model of the single row
layout problem adopted in this research considered the
dimensions and clearance between machines as a variable
which most of earlier researchers ignored. This leads to a
better representation of a realistic problem. Different sets of
problems are used to evaluate the proposed ACO/PSO
heuristic with other algorithms reported in the literature. It is
found that the proposed ACO/PSO performs better over the
heuristics reported in the literature. It is also noted that the
proposed heuristics could provide best solution for larger
problems than smaller one.
REFERENCES
[1] Tompkins J.A., White J.A., Bozer Y.A., Frazelle E.H., Tanchoco
J.M., Trevino J., Facilities Planning. New York: Wiley; 1996.
602
[2] Hassan M.M.D. Machine layout problem in modern manufacturing
facilities. International Journal of Production Research. 1994;
32:2559-2584.
[3] Solimanpur M., Vrat P., Shankar R. An ant algorithm for the single
row layout problem in flexible manufacturing systems. Computer &
Operations Research. 2005; 32:583-598
[4] Beghin-Picavet. M., Hansen, P. Deux problemes daffectation non
lineaires. RAIRO Recherche Operationelle. 1982; 16:263-276.
[5] Ficko M., Brezocnik M., Balic J. Designing the layout of single- and
multiple-rows flexible manufacturing system by genetic algorithms.
Journal of Materials Processing Technology. 2004; 150-158.
[6] Quadratic assignment problem Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
[Online] 2007 [cited 2007 October 1]. Available from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_assignment_problem
[7] Kumar K.R., Hadjinicola G.C., Ting-Li L., A heuristic procedure for
the single-row facility layout problem. European Journal of
Operational Research, 1995; 87:65-73.
[8] Braglia M. Optimisation of a Simulated-Annealing-based Heuristic
for Single Row Machine Layout Problem by Genetic Algorithm.
International Transaction in Operational Research. 1996; 3:37-49
[9] Sarker B.R., Wilhelm W.E. & Hogg G.L. Backtracking and its
amoebic properties in one-dimensional machine location problems.
Journal of Operational Research Society. 1994; 45:1024-1039.
[10] Kouvelis P., Chiang W.C. A simulated annealing procedure for
single row layout problems in flexible manufacturing systems.
International Journal of Production Research. 1992; 30:717-732.
[11] Braglia M. Heuristics for single-row layout problems in flexible
manufacturing systems. Production Planning & Control. 1997;
8:558-567.
[12] Nawaz N., Enscore Jr. E. E., Ham I. A heuristic algorithm for m-
machine, n-job flow-shop scheduling problem. Omega, 1983; 11:91-
95.
[13] Djellab H., Gourgand M. A new heuristic procedure for the single-
row facility layout problem. International Journal of Computer
Integrated Manufacturing. 2001; 14:270-280
[14] Singh S. P., Sharma R. R. K. A review of different approaches to
facility layout problems. International Journal, Advance
Manufacturing Technology 2006; 30: 425-433
[15] Colorni, A., Dorigo, M. and Maniezzo, V. Positive Feedback as a
Search Strategy. Technical Report. 1996; No. 91-016, Politecnico di
Milano, Italy
[16] Colorni, A., Dorigo, M. and Maniezzo, V. The Ant System: An
Autocatatlytic Process. Technical Report. 1996; No. 91-016,
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
[17] Dorigo, M. and Sttzle, T. Ant Colony Optimization. London,
England: The MIT Press. 2004. Pg. 76-80.
[18] Maniezzo, V. Exact and approximate nondeterministic tree-search
procedures for the quadratic assignment problem. INFORMS
Journal on Computing. 1999; 11:358-369
[19] Eberhart, R. C., and Kennedy, J. A new optimizer using particle
swarm theory. Proc. Sixth International Symposium on Micro
Machine and Human Science (Nagoya, Japan) 1995; No. 39-43,
IEEE Service Center, Piscataway, NJ
[20] Kennedy, J., and Eberhart, R. C. Particle swarm optimization. Proc.
IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks (Perth, Australia)
1995; No. IV: 1942-1948, IEEE Service Center, Piscataway, NJ
[21] Kennedy, J. The particle swarm: social adaptation of knowledge
Proc. IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation
(Indianapolis, Indiana) 1997; No. 303-308, IEEE Service Center,
Piscataway, NJ
[22] Nugent C.E., Vollman T.E., Ruml, J., An experimental comparison
of techniques for the assignment of facilities to locations. Operations
Research, 1968; 16: 150-173
[23] Heragu S.S., Kusiak A. Machine layout problem in flexible
manufacturing systems. Operation Research. 1988; 36:258-268.
[24] Love R.F., Wong J.Y., On solving a one-dimensional space
allocation problem with integer programming. INFOR, 1976; 14(2):
139-143
[25] Simmons D.M., One-dimensional space allocation: an ordering
algorithm. Operations Research, 1969; 17(5): 812-826
[26] Heragu S.S., Kusiak A., Efficient models for the facility layout
problem. European Journal of Operational Research. 1991; 53(1): 1-
13
[27] Heragu S.S. and Alfa A.S. Experimental analysis of simulated
annealing based algorithms for the layout problem. European
Journal of Operational Research. 1992; 57(2): 190-202
[28] Hall KM. An r-dimensional quadratic placement algorithm.
Management Science 1970; 17(3):219-29
[29] Neghabat F. An efficient equipment layout algorithm. Operations
Research 1974;22:622-8.