Title: Integrated optimisation of the unequal-area facility layout and the flowshop group scheduling problems for a case of the garment industry

Authors: Sebastian Cáceres-Gelvez; Martín Darío Arango-Serna; Julián Andrés Zapata-Cortés

Addresses: Grupo de Investigación GICO – Logística Industrial Organizacional, Departamento de Ingeniería de la Organización, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia; Grupo de Investigación EUREKA UDES, Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad de Santander, Cúcuta, Colombia ' Grupo de Investigación GICO – Logística Industrial Organizacional, Departamento de Ingeniería de la Organización, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia ' Escuela de Negocios, Institución Universitaria CEIPA, Sabaneta, Colombia

Abstract: The unequal-area facility layout (UAFLP) and the flowshop group scheduling (FSGSP) problems are two important problems in both research literature and industrial applications. The former considers the location of departments with different area requirements within a floor plan. The latter seeks for a sequence of product families and jobs to be processed on groups of machines, called manufacturing cells. In this paper, an integrated approach for optimising both the UAFLP and the FSGSP is presented in the case of a sportswear manufacturing company. A genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed for minimising the sum of the total material handling and the tardiness costs. The results showed that the optimisation process obtained a reduction of 6.69% of the total costs for the proposed alternative, in comparison with the current situation of the case study.

Keywords: unequal-area facility layout; flowshop group scheduling; genetic algorithm; garment industry; integrated optimisation; case study.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2023.134352

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2023 Vol.45 No.2, pp.148 - 172

Received: 12 May 2021
Accepted: 24 Dec 2021
Published online: 19 Oct 2023 *

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