Metaheuristics: An Advanced optimization methods in FMS

This work is devoted to Manufacturing Industries where allocation of facilities of various Flexible Manufacturing System layout leads to cumbersome process. The research approach to the subject of facility layout and location is a quantitative one. The authors view these problems as optimization problems; i.e. what decisions will optimize some measures of performance, subject to some constraints, etc. The in-depth gaining of information on process of facility and system design leads to know how difficult these problems are. This research work is taken up because the authors understood that quantitative models are essential for complex facility design and location decisions. This research highlights the global optimization algorithms which are methods to find optimal solutions for given problems. It especially focuses on Evolutionary Computation by discussing evolutionary algorithms such as Genetic Algorithms, Swarm intelligence techniques such as Particle Swarm Optimization. It also elaborates on other meta-heuristics like Simulated Annealing.