A reexamination of the distance-based facility layout problem

In this paper we qualitatively and numerically compare basic modeling approaches to the distance-based facility layout problem and the types of result obtained from them. In the process we observe that when the facility layout problem is modeled as a QAP, one will not necessarily obtain an optimal solution to the layout problem even if the QAP is solved to optimality. We also propose an alternative distance measure, namely, EDIST, which is based on the expected distance between two departments. We illustrate how the EDIST measure addresses some of the well-known shortcomings associated with the centroid-to-centroid distance measure.