Facility Layout Modification of Existing Pressure Die Casting Manufacturing Plant Using Craft and Aco Algorithms

The optimization of facility layout is an important role of manufacturing system design since the layout of manufacturing departments directly effects on the material handling distance reduce, the flow of production and operational efficiency. An inefficient layout may result in unnecessary transportation, increased handling effort and poor utilization of available floor space. Here an existing pressure die-casting manufacturing plant at Tyche Cast Tech Pvt. Ltd. In order to assess the alternative department arrangements, the Load Distance method is adopted as the objective function. To explore possible enhancements in the current configuration, two optimization methods, such as Computerized Relative Allocation of Facilities Technique (CRAFT) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), are used. CRAFT solves the problem of arranging the department interchanges, while ACO solves the problem of assigning the departments to a specific position based on the pheromone and heuristic information. Material flow and inter-department distance are adopted as the common evaluation criteria to assess the performance of the resulted layouts. The suggested layouts will need to be further tested for actual department sizes, equipment requirements, aisles, safety clearances, or other operational considerations and conditions before being installed in practice.