SRFL-DP: A Rapid and Efficient Solution for Single-Row Facility Layout Optimization

The goal of the Single-Row Facility Layout Problem (SRFLP) is to arrange facilities along a straight line in such a way that the total layout cost is minimized. This cost is calculated as the sum of the products of flow costs and the distances between pairs of facilities. SRFLP has numerous practical applications in real-life scenarios, but it is NP-hard. To solve the Single-Row Facility Layout Problem (SRFLP), we propose a novel solution method SRFL-DP. This approach models SRFLP as an electrostatic equilibrium problem, enabling the derivation of a feasible solution in a very short time. Then, a simulated annealing algorithm is applied to this feasible solution, allowing for the exchange of facilities to further reduce the total layout cost. Our method significantly reduces the computational time required to obtain results. When compared with the state-of-the-art KMPG algorithm on the Ranlarge dataset with 2000 facilities, our method takes only 1/11th of the time and performs even faster on other datasets.