A Monte Carlo simulation based heuristic procedure for solving dynamic line layout problems for facilities using conventional material handling devices

Abstract

A simple procedure is proposed to identify line layout solutions when a production facility with work centres of unequal size uses conventional material handling devices and operates under stochastic demand scenarios. The procedure uses Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to empirically search for robust solutions defined as those that simultaneously meet minimum material handling cost performance levels across all demand scenarios. The results reported in this study suggest that ‘robust’ line layout solutions can be identified using a modest volume of random sampling. The procedure and results are demonstrated through a series of sample problems.

Keywords:

• line layout
• material handling
• volume distance
• Monte Carlo simulation
• robustness

Acknowledgements

The authors express gratitude to the anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments have significantly improved this paper.