OPTIMIZING THE LOCATION OF INPUT OUTPUT STATIONS WITHIN FACILITIES LAYOUT

This paper proposes a methodology for characterizing and locating input/output stations within a facilities layout, with the objective of maximizing flow efficiency. A set of stations is first defined for each department, each of these stations is restricted to a feasible boundary region. An interstation flow set is generated based on the station characteristics and the interdepartment flows. Then an efficient optimization model, related to the multifacility location model, is solved to obtain a set of station locations minimizing the sum of the rectilinear distance traveled by all interstation flows, given the boundary regions on station location.