Hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Variable Neighborhood Search for Dynamic Facility Layout Problem

Abstract

This paper presents a novel hybrid metaheuristic GA-VNS matching genetic algorithm (GA) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) to the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP). The DFLP is a well-known NP hard problem which aims at assigning a set of facilities to a set of locations over a time planning horizon so that the total cost including material handling cost and re-arrangement cost is minimized. The proposed hybrid approach in this paper elegantly integrates the exploitation ability of VNS and exploration ability of GA. To examine the performance of the proposed hybrid approach, a set of instance problems have been used from the literature. As demonstrated in the results, the GA-VNS is mighty of attaining high quality solution. Compared with some state-of-the-art algorithms, our proposed hybrid approach is competitive.