A New Solution To A Special Layout Problem

A layout of interest in cellular manufacturing is that of arranging machines in, at most, two rows of any curvilinear nature, such as u-shape. Due to inefficiency of the commercial layout programs such as craft in handling large problems, a heuristic is developed that generates good layouts. This paper describes the performance of different commercially used layout programs when applied to a special layout of interest, and compares their performance with that of the proposed method. It is seen that the new approach could determine more efficient layouts in less time and thus is preferred.