Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review, evaluate and classify the academic research that has been published in facility layout problems (FLPs) and to analyse how researches and practices on FLPs are.

Design/methodology/approach

The review is based on 166 papers published from 1953 to 2021 in international peer-reviewed journals. The literature review on FLPs is presented under broader headings of discrete space and continuous space FLPs. The important formulations of FLPs under static and dynamic environments represented in the discrete and continuous space are presented. The articles reported in the literature on various representations of facilities for the continuous space Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems (UA-FLPs) are summarized. Discussed and commented on adaptive and robust approaches for dynamic environment FLPs. Highlighted the application of meta-heuristic solution methods for FLPs of a larger size.

Findings

It is found that most of the earlier research adopted the discrete space for the formulation of FLPs. This type of space representation for FLPs mostly assumes an equal area for all facilities. UA-FLPs represented in discrete space yield irregular shape facilities. It is also observed that the recent works consider the UA-FLPs in continuous space. The solution of continuous space UA-FLPs is more accurate and realistic. Some of the recent works on UA-FLPs consider the flexible bay structure (FBS) due to its advantages over the other representations. FBS helps the proper design of aisle structure in the detailed layout plan. Further, the recent articles reported in the literature consider the dynamic environment for both equal and unequal area FLPs to cope with the changing market environment. It is also found that FLPs are Non-deterministic Polynomial-complete problems, and hence, they set the challenges to researchers to develop efficient meta-heuristic methods to solve the bigger size FLPs in a reasonable time.

Research limitations/implications

Due to the extremely large number of papers on FLPs, a few papers may have inadvertently been missed. The facility layout design research domain is extremely vast which covers other areas such as cellular layouts, pick and drop points and aisle structure design. This research review on FLPs did not consider the papers published on cellular layouts, pick and drop points and aisle structure design. Despite the possibility of not being all-inclusive, the authors firmly believe that most of the papers published on FLPs are covered and the general picture presented on various approaches and parameters of FLPs in this paper are precise and trustworthy.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper reviews and classifies the literature on FLPs for the first time under the broader headings of discrete space and continuous space representations. Many important formulations of FLPs under static and dynamic environments represented in the discrete and continuous space are presented. This paper also provides the observations from the literature review and identifies the prospective future directions.

中文翻译：

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离散空间与连续空间设施布局问题调查

目的

本文的目的是回顾、评估和分类已发表的设施布局问题（FLPs）的学术研究，并分析 FLPs 的研究和实践情况。

设计/方法/方法

该评论基于 1953 年至 2021 年在国际同行评审期刊上发表的 166 篇论文。关于 FLP 的文献综述在离散空间和连续空间 FLP 的更广泛标题下呈现。介绍了在离散和连续空间中表示的静态和动态环境下 FLP 的重要公式。总结了文献中关于连续空间不等面积设施布局问题 (UA-FLP) 设施的各种表示的文章。讨论并评论了动态环境 FLP 的自适应和鲁棒方法。突出了元启发式求解方法在更大尺寸 FLP 中的应用。

发现

发现大多数早期研究采用离散空间来制定 FLP。FLP 的这种类型的空间表示主要假设所有设施的面积相等。以离散空间表示的 UA-FLP 产生不规则形状设施。还观察到，最近的工作考虑了连续空间中的 UA-FLP。连续空间UA-FLPs的求解更加准确和现实。最近关于 UA-FLP 的一些工作考虑了灵活的间隔结构（FBS），因为它优于其他表示。FBS有助于在详细布局计划中正确设计过道结构。此外，最近在文献中报道的文章考虑了平等和不平等地区 FLP 的动态环境，以应对不断变化的市场环境。

研究限制/影响

由于有关 FLP 的论文数量极其庞大，因此可能会无意中遗漏了一些论文。设施布局设计研究领域极其广阔，涵盖蜂窝布局、取放点和通道结构设计等其他领域。这篇关于 FLP 的研究综述没有考虑发表在蜂窝布局、取放点和过道结构设计方面的论文。尽管可能无法包罗万象，但作者坚信，大多数发表在 FLP 上的论文都已涵盖，并且本文中关于 FLP 的各种方法和参数的总体情况是准确且值得信赖的。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，本文首次在离散空间和连续空间表示的更广泛标题下对有关 FLP 的文献进行了回顾和分类。提出了在离散和连续空间中表示的静态和动态环境下的许多重要的 FLP 公式。本文还提供了文献综述的观察结果，并确定了未来的发展方向。