Session:

Hybrid System Applications
Sunday, February 29, 2004, 12.00 – 12.20

Session Chair:

Fikret Gürgen

Paper Title:

Evolutionary Strategies in Agile Facility Design

Author(s):

A. Stachowiak, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
Prof. M. Fertsch, Poznan University of Technology, Poland

Abstract:

Facility layout usually depends on products the facility manufactures and processes it performs. Nowadays market situation is volatile as customers’ demands change more and more often. That is why the facility has to be agile to survive. Main characteristics of agility which are changing product mix, co-operation and interaction with customer in product development process and focusing on customers’ requirements make agile facility layout design difficult. Designing facility layout for the manufacturing process which cannot be precisely formulated and is supposed to change is undoubtedly a specific problem. To solve this problem model of agile facility is to be introduced and evolutionary strategy is to be used.

Evolutionary strategies are the AI methods of optimising functions by imitating the natural selection and biological evolutionary process in order to achieve the best solution of a problem according to the rule “the best survives”. They combine randomised search and stochastic heuristic. Evolutionary strategies, as well as genetic algorithms, are believed to be suitable methods for FLP (Facility Layout Problems) because they are easy, cheap and fast to use. The paper introduces the idea of agility, the model of agile facility and the evolutionary strategy used in agile facility design procedure.