Creating alternative layout plans with simulated annealing and data mining

When studies in literature are examined, it is seen that different approaches have been used to solve facility layout problems. The relationship between departments in layout is always important. In this study, data mining technique is used for analyzing relations among departments and then association rules are obtained. Determining closeness relationships between the departments in facility are often ambiguous and require expert opinions. In such cases, a fuzzy component emerges in the facility layout problem. Hence, fuzzy logic is widely used to address ambiguous problems. Association rules is converted by using defuzzification approach to crisp values used facility layout problem solution in this study. Facility layout problems are considered to be NP-Hard (Nondeterministic-Polynomial-Hard) optimization problems. That is, definite solution approaches are limited in solving large-scale problem examples. For heuristic approaches are frequently used to improve the layout, simulated annealing approach is used in this study. To improve facility layout planning, simulated annealing approach is carried out via code written in Visual Basic 2012. In conclusion, 17% improvement is achieved with alternative layout plan obtained.