A Decision Support Framework for FLP in the Context of Industrial Facilities by the Use of BIM

Abstract

In today's industrial production environment, an effective solution to the FLP (Facility Layout Problem) plays a significant role in deciding whether a facility will hold a competitive advantage against others by its improved workflow. This advantage comes from an efficient placement of facilities, which mostly contributes to the overall business performance. In addition to that, regarding the need to answer the demands of the dynamic market, facilities need to adapt their processes and adapt their production line as quickly as possible. Therefore, a continuous search for a solution to the FLP is present. Although there are many space allocation programs available both as academic and commercial products, present approaches' availability in the BIM environment is not common yet. This paper introduces a decision support system framework which uses Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) to generate the most appropriate solution in Revit Dynamo environment both in the earlier phases of design and through the life-cycle of the facility. The proposed framework will specifically be responsible for generating solutions for equipment location in serial production facilities. As NSGA-II is a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA), a second optimization criterion is defined as the optimization of the foreman's locations distributed on the shop floor. A Dynamo package named Refinery will hold the optimization and evaluation procedures.