CONTINUOUS-DOMAIN MATHEMATICAL-MODELS FOR OPTIMAL PROCESS PLANT LAYOUT

This paper presents mathematical programming models for the optimal pr ocess plant layout based on a continuous dimensional space. Two altern ative formulations are proposed which can accommodate rectangular equi pment footprints of arbitrary size. Then, one of the formulations is e xtended to account for a common designer objective: to organize the la yout into well-defined production sections. All models are formulated as mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems which can be solve d to global optimality by using commercial optimization software. The applicability of the proposed mathematical models is demonstrated by a number of illustrative examples.