An improved GRASP method for the multiple row equal facility layout problem

As it is well documented in the literature, an effective facility layout design of a company significantly increases throughput, overall productivity, and efficiency. Symmetrically, a poor facility layout results in increased work-in process and manufacturing lead time. In this paper we focus on the Multiple Row Equal Facility Layout Problem (MREFLP) which consists in locating a given set of facilities in a layout where a maximum number of rows is fixed. We propose a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP), with an improved local search that relies on an efficient calculation of the objective function, and a probabilistic strategy to select those solutions that will be improved. We conduct a through preliminary experimentation to investigate the influence of the proposed strategies and to tune the corresponding search parameters. Finally, we compare our best variant with current state-of-the-art algorithms over a set of 552 diverse instances. Experimental results show that the proposed GRASP finds better results spending much less execution time. •Successful application of a metaheuristic to solve a challenging NP-Problem.•Probabilistic approach to improve only promising solutions.•Efficient evaluation of move operators.•Thorough experimentation over a set of benchmark instances.•Comparison with the state-of-the-art methods over a set of 552 instances.