COMPUTER AIDED FACILITY LAYOUT PLANNING (CAFLAP

Abstract

With the development of new technologies like GT (Group Technology), FMS (Flexible Manufacturing systems), JIT (Just in time), Robotics in the field of manufacturing, the new manufacturing facilities demanded new models, and solution methodologies to address their design and operations. One of the design activities, in modern manufacturing facilities is determining the machine arrangement on the shop floor. This activity involves several details of the facility and interacts with many functional areas. In this thesis, a model was developed for the formulation and solution of the machine layout problems and a computer software was developed to assist the machine layout problems. Some other layout procedures are also taken from literature and are included with modifications to suit the type of problems considered. It is equipped with single row, multi rows layout procedures as constructional algorithms, Improvement procedure for improving any existing layout to suit the new demand changes. The developed method for multi rows layout uses both heuristic and optimization AIDED procedures. So a general title "COMPUTER'r•...,v; FACILITY LAYOUT PLANNING (CAFLAP)" is chosen. In this report different algorithms are described along with the software usage instructions.