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Two-level modified simulated annealing based approach
for solving facility layout problem
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International Journal of Production Research,
2007, 1–20, iFirst
Downloaded By: [National University of Singapore] At: 08:57 8 April 2007
Two-level modified simulated annealing based approach for solving

facility layout problem
S. P. SINGH* and R. R. K. SHARMA
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Indian Institute

of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016 (UP), India
(Revision received December 2006)
In this paper, we are considering the quadratic assignment model (QAP) of the
facility layout problem (FLP) which is known to be NP-hard. We relax the integer
constraints of the QAP and solve it on a commercially available package called
LINGO 8. In the optimal solution so obtained, Xijs take real values between zero
and one. We identify promising Xijs having a value strictly greater than 0.5 in the
optimal solution and set them to one. We add the constraints (Xij ¼ 1) associated
with promising Xijs into the QAP (with integer restrictions) and resolve using
LINGO 8. In all the cases attempted we obtained a superior feasible solution to
the QAP which was further improved by the proposed modified simulated
annealing (MSA) procedure. An encouraging comparative performance of this
procedure is thus reported.
Keywords: Facility layout; Quadratic assignment problem; Simulated annealing
1. Introduction
The FLP is a well researched problem. Locating facilities in a given space is a

common problem encountered in the manufacturing industries. Koopmans and
Beckman (1957) first modelled FLP as the quadratic assignment problem (QAP).
The QAP has been shown to be NP-hard (Sahni and Gonzalez 1976, Burkard and
Stratmann 1978, Burkard et al. 1997). Nowadays, the results achieved by applying
the best existing exact algorithms (Branch and Bound) are modest: generally
instances of the QAP of sizes larger than 30 cannot be solved optimally in a
reasonable time (Li et al. 1994, Diponegoro and Sarker 2003). Thus, the interest lies
in the application of heuristic and meta-heuristic methods to solve large QAP
instances. In this direction one such approach that has given encouraging results is
the simulated annealing (SA) method (Burkard and Rendl 1984, Wilhelm and Ward
1987, Connolly 1990, Bolte and Thonemann 1996). Other approaches that can be
used to compete with SA includes genetic algorithm (GA) (see Tate and Smith 1995,
Ahuja et al. 2000, Azadivar and Wang 2000, Balakrishnan et al. 2003), tabu search
(see Glover 1989, 1990, Taillard 1991, Chiang and Kouvelis 1996) and Ant
Colony Algorithm (refer to Gambardella et al. 1999, Maniezzo and Colorni 1999,
Sttzle and Dorigo 1999, Middendorf et al. 2002, Dorigo and Blum 2005,
*Corresponding author. Email: sprsingh@iitk.ac.in
International Journal of Production Research

ISSN 0020–7543 print/ISSN 1366–588X online ß 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/00207540601178557
2 S. P. Singh and R. R. K. Sharma
Solimanpur et al. 2005). A good survey on various approaches to solve FLP can be
found from Francis and White (1974), Moore (1974), O’Brien and Abdel Barr
(1980), Tompkins and White (1984), Kusiak and Heragu (1987), Rosenblatt and
Lee (1987), Heragu (1988, 1992, 1997), Heragu and Kusiak (1988, 1989), Li et al.
(1994), Meller and Gau (1996a, b), Kochhar and Heragu (1999), Malmborg (1999),
Loiola et al. (2006), Singh and Sharma (2006).
This paper proposes a two-level SA based approach for solving the FLP. The
literature relevant to the application of SA in solving the FLP (modelled as the QAP)
is reviewed in section 2. Mathematical formulation is given in section 3. An overview
of SA is provided in section 4. Proposed two-level SA based approach consisting of
H-1 and H-2 is presented in section 5, while section 6 deals with computational
experiments and its results. Finally, in section 7 concluding remarks are provided.
2. Related work
Papers that deal with the research work related to SA in connection with FLP are
considered for discussion. The SA was first proposed by Kirkpatrick et al. (1983) for
the optimization problem. They applied SA to the wiring problem and the travelling
salesman problem.
Burkard and Rendl (1984) first derived the SA scheme for the QAP. They used
homogeneous cooling schedule in the SA. In the SA proposed by them the process
remained at same the temperature until a fixed number of trials had been considered
before going to the next temperature. If all the temperatures were explored the SA
terminated and returned the best solution obtained so far. A sophisticated SA based
approach for the QAP was proposed by Wilhelm and Ward (1987) who provided
necessary details concerning the setting of control parameters. The authors reported
the solutions to be of quite good quality, but they chose static control parameters.
Peng et al. (1996) attempted to solve the QAP by the SA. They introduced six kinds
of random sampling modes to satisfy asymptotical convergence requirement of the
SA. They concluded that these six kinds of random sampling modes have different
ability for solving the QAP or, in other words, they have different efficiency for
searching a solution space of the QAP. They did not apply these SA methods to any
benchmark problem for showing the efficacy of their results. Connolly (1990) tried to
analyze the role of option components of the SA approach such as temperature
schedule and random sequential neighbourhood search. He found that there existed
a fixed temperature, at which the annealing scheme gives the best solution. Bolte and
Thonemann (1996) applied GA in conjunction with SA for solving the QAP. They
used cosine function to generate a schedule that oscillates about the temperature with
amplitude of half the temperature. Heragu and Alfa (1992) extended the work of
Wilhelm and Ward (1987) and proposed a hybrid SA that generated an approximate
solution using penalty algorithm which was then improved by the SA. Laursen
(1993) reported solution quality of SA for the QAP. He modified the general SA by
varying two of the parameters in the SA algorithm i.e. number of simulations and
length of each simulation. He tested the algorithm on the data sets of Nugent et al.
(1968) and presented the solutions. Meller and Bozer (1996) presented an application
of the SA to solve single and multi-floor FLP. The algorithm has been tested
for moderate problem sizes of n ¼ 3, 5, 9, 10. Balakrishnan et al. (2003) applied
Two-level modified SA based approach for solving FLP 3
conventional SA to the QAP and compared the results with the best known GA
heuristics.
The conclusion, after this brief review, is that there have only been a few attempts
made to modify the SA for improving solution quality. Also, all previously applied
SA procedures used an initial solution that was randomly generated. In the present
work, an attempt is made to deal with such issues in detail. A heuristic is presented to
find an initial solution for the problem and MSA is applied to further improve the
quality of the solution.
3. Mathematical formulation
Consider the problem of locating ‘n’ facilities in ‘n’ given locations. Each location
can be assigned to only one facility, and each facility can be assigned to only one
location. There is material flow between the different departments and cost (material
handling) associated with the unit flow per unit distance. Thus, different layouts have
different total material handling costs depending on the relative location of the
facilities. Fik is the flow between facilities ‘i’ and ‘k’, and Djl is the distance between
locations ‘j’ and ‘l’. The FLP has been formulated as follows:
Problem P:
n X
X n X
n X
n
Min TF ¼ Fik Djl Xij Xkl ð1Þ
i¼1 j¼1 k¼1 l
i6¼k j6¼l
X
n
Xij ¼ 1 8i ¼ 1, . . . , n ð2Þ
j¼1
X
n
Xij ¼ 1 8j ¼ 1, . . . , n ð3Þ
i¼1
Xij 2 f0, 1g: ð4Þ

Xij ¼ 1 if facility ‘i’ is located/assigned to location ‘j’ and Xij ¼ 0 if facility ‘i’ is not
located/assigned to location ‘j’. Where ‘n’ is the number of facilities in the layout. In
equation (1) we seek to minimize the sum of flow multiplied by the distance for all
pairs of facilities in a given layout. Equation (2) ensures that each location contains
only one facility. Equation (3) ensures that each facility is assigned only one location.
We relax constraint (4) by replacing it with
Xij 0, 8i, j ¼ 1, . . . , n ð5Þ
and solve problem P by the LINGO 8 package. All Xijs having a value greater than
0.5 (called promising Xijs) are set at 1. These constraints (Xij ¼ 1) are associated
with promising Xijs called equation (6). Finally, Problem P is resolved with
equations (2), (3), (4) and (6) as constraints, and the solution returned by LINGO 8 is
used as a starting solution. This is the essence of heuristic H-1 described in detail
later in subsection 5.1. Solution given by H-1 is further improved by the MSA
procedure given in sub-section 5.2. Now in section 4, a brief overview of the SA

procedure is discussed.
4. Overview of simulated annealing
The SA is a useful meta-heuristic for solving hard combinatorial optimization

problems and the QAP in particular. It was first introduced by Kirkpatrick et al.
(1983). The SA is a step-by-step method which could be considered as an
improvement of the local optimization algorithm. The local optimization algorithm
proceeds by generating, at each iteration, a solution in the neighbourhood of the
previous one. If the value of criterion corresponding to the new solution is better
than the previous one, the new solution is selected, otherwise it is rejected. The SA
algorithm terminates either when it is no longer possible to improve the solution or
the maximum number of trials decided by the user is reached. The main drawback of
the local optimization algorithm is that it terminates at a local minimum which
depends on the initial solution and may be far from the global minimum.
The SA algorithm avoids entrapment in a local optimum. The difference with the
local optimization is that a solution A0 derived from a solution A is not only accepted
if A0 is better than A but it may also be accepted if A0 is worse than A. Boltzmann’s
law is used to determine this acceptance probability that is given as P(accept) ¼
ez/bt, where b is Boltzmann’s constant and t (TI t TF, where TI and TF are the
initial and final temperatures respectively) is the given parameter called the
temperature which changes over time according to some cooling schedule, and
z ¼ z(A0 ) z(A) 0. This is known as the Metropolis acceptance rule which implies
that (i) the smaller the increase of the z value, the more likely the new solution is
selected, and (ii) the lower the value of ‘t’ and greater the number of trials ‘Q’, the less
likely the new solution is selected.
The basic algorithm of SA is given as follows:
Step 1: Randomly, select the initial solution ‘i’ as a starting solution for SA.
Step 2: Choose an initial temperature TI40.
Step 3: Choose the temperature updating function i.e. annealing (or cooling)
schedule.
Step 4: Choose the epoch length function.
Step 5: Set temperature change counter t ¼ 0 and epoch length counter l ¼ 0.
Step 6: Generate Solution A0 in the neighbourhood of A by exchanging two
facilities.
Step 7: Calculate z ¼ z(A0 ) z(A).
Step 8: If z50 then replace A by A0 else go to Step 10.
Step 9: If random (0, 1)5exp (z/bt) then A0 ¼ A.
Step 10: Repeat steps 7 to 10 until l ¼ Q (maximum number of trials for which the
temperature is ‘t’).
Step 11: Calculate the next temperature as per the temperature change function
taken at step 3 and repeat steps 6 to 11 for the next temperature.
Step 12: Repeat these steps until the stopping criteria becomes true.
The SA procedure chosen has to set the following factors: the initial temperature,
the epoch length, the cooling (annealing) schedule and the termination criterion.
4.1 Initial temperature

Kirkpatrick et al. (1983) proposed a large initial temperature so that essentially all
the solutions are accepted at the first stage of the SA process with a probability of
P ¼ 0.8.
4.2 Epoch length

Let Nk be the epoch length (i.e. the number of trials to be performed with the same
temperature value). Some functions available in the literature are as follows:
(a) Constant function: Nk ¼ Constant, where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(b) Arithmetic function: Nk ¼ Nk1 þ Constant, where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(c) Geometric function: Nk ¼ Nk1/a, where ‘a’ is constant less than 1 and
k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(d) Logarithmic function: Nk ¼ Constant/Log (Tk), where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(e) Exponential function: Nk ¼ (Nk1)1/a, where ‘a’ is constant less than 1 and
k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q.
4.3 Cooling (annealing) schedule

Temperature is used to compute the acceptance probability of a solution which is
worse than the previous one. The few functions for updating the temperature that are
given the in the literature are:
(a) Arithmetic function tkþ1 ¼ tk constant, k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(b) Geometric function tkþ1 ¼ tk where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q, t0 ¼ TI (initial tempera-
ture) constant, and 51;
(c) Logarithmic function tk ¼ constant/log(k þ 2), where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q;
(d) Inverse function tkþ1 ¼ tk/(1 þ tk), where k ¼ 0, 1, . . . , Q, t0 ¼ TI (initial
temperature) constant, 55t0, and tk ¼ constant/(1 þ k).
4.4 Stopping criteria

A few of the tests described in the literature are given below:
(a) a given total number of iterations have been performed;
(b) if the previously defined number of acceptance for a given number of trials has
not been obtained;
(c) if the given final temperature is not reached;
(d) if there is no improvement for a number of iterations.
For more details about the simulated annealing the reader is addressed to Van
Laarhoven and Aarts (1987), Dowsland (1995).
5. Two-level MSA based approach
This section presents the two-level MSA approach for solving QAPFLP which mainly
consists of first level heuristic called H-1 and second level meta-heuristic called MSA
(or H-2). Subsection 5.1 describes H-1 while subsection 5.2 deals with H-2.
5.1 First level heuristic (H-1)

Here, a heuristic is presented to prepare an initial assignment of facilities to
locations. The solution obtained by the proposed heuristic is also compared with the
solution of other well known heuristics. The various steps involved in H-1 are
discussed here with an illustrative example.
5.1.1 Steps of the proposed H-1. The steps of the proposed heuristic are as follows:
Step 1: We drop the integrality constraint to obtain the relaxed problem (PR)
given as:
Problem PR: Equation (1), subject to constraints (equations) (2), (3) and (5).
Constraints (2) and (3) will ensure the values of Xij 1. Assign Set_of_ones ¼ NULL.
Set_of_ones is a set of candidate variables with its potential value as ‘1’. The
Set_of_ones is updated in step 3 below.
Step 2: We solve problem PR ((1), subject to (2), (3) and (5)) by using the
commercially available LINGO 8 software.
Step 3: Optimal solution to PR yields fractional values (between 0 and 1) of Xij.
Below we give a simple procedure to identify promising Xijs that can be set to ‘1’. For
facility ‘i’ 8i ¼ 1, . . . , n, search the candidate variable Xij having the largest value
8j ¼ 1, . . . , n. If the value of the candidate variable is strictly greater than 0.5, then
assign
Set_of_ones ¼ Set_of_ones þ {Xij}.
Step 4: Develop constraint (6) associated with Set_of_ones as follows: for every
Xij 2 Set_of_ones, generate a constraint Xij ¼ 1. All such constraints so generated are
labelled as (6).
Step 5: We solve problem MP (modified problem) by adding constraint (6) to
problem P.
Problem MP: Equation (1), subject to constraints (equations) (2), (3), (4) and (6).
The solution obtained is the starting solution for MSA (H-2) described in
section 5.2. Since many Xijs are already set at ‘1’ in step 3, a few Xijs need to be
considered while solving the problem MP at step 5. This results in much less time
required to solve. At step 1, we solve the problem PR (a relaxation of the QAP) and
hence it takes less time to solve. These are the advantages of H-1.
The following section uses an example to illustrate the detailed steps of H-1.
5.1.2 Illustrative example. To illustrate the steps of H-1, a problem of size n ¼ 5 is

taken from Nugent et al. (1968):
Step 1: Prepare the associated problem PR for the instance of the QAP with n ¼ 5.
Step 2: Solution obtained for problem PR is: X11 ¼ 1; X22 ¼ 0.99983; X23 ¼ 0.16667;
X32 ¼ 0.16667; X34 ¼ 0.999833; X43 ¼ 0.999833; X45 ¼ 0.16667; X54 ¼ 0.16667;
X55 ¼ 0.999833; and all the rest Xij ¼ 0.
Step 3: Set_of_ones is updated as follows: Set_of_ones ¼ {X11, X22, X34, X43, X55}.
Step 4: Constraint (6) associated with Set_of_ones are: X11 ¼ 1; X22 ¼ 1; X34 ¼ 1;
X43 ¼ 1; and X55 ¼ 1.
Step 5: Solving problem MP yields a feasible solution to problem P (the QAP) as:
X11 ¼ 1; X22 ¼ 1; X34 ¼ 1; X43 ¼ 1; and X55 ¼ 1 with the objective function value 25.
It can be seen from tables 1 and 2 that for this problem CRAFT gave a solution with
an average value of 27.
The proposed heuristic has been applied to all problems of Nugent et al. (1968)
and table 1 presents the solution of all these problems. Comparative analysis has
been done with other construction heuristics and is given in table 2. The table shows
that the solution of the proposed heuristic in the first-level is better or close to the
average value given by H63, H63-66, CRAFT, FLAC, FATE and TAA.
5.2 Second level meta-heuristic (H-2): MSA

This section provides the details of the meta-heuristic applied i.e. MSA. Instead of
using random assignment of facilities to location, the solution obtained by the
heuristic (H-1) given in section 5.1 is used as an initial solution. A two-way exchange
process is adopted for improving the quality of solution. Hence, for a single iteration
n (n 1)/2 number of swaps will be examined for accepting or rejecting the solution.
The swapping was done in a fixed order and is different from the ‘random’
swapping scheme used by Misevicius (2003). Details of various control parameters
of simulated annealing that modified the general simulated annealing are
described here.
Like the general SA, initial temperature and final temperatures are not fixed here
instead temperatures are considered as a function of minimum change (Zmin),
Table 1. Proposed heuristic (H-1) solution on instances taken from

Nugent et al. (1968).
S. No. Instance Optimal solution H-1 Solution % Deviation
1 Nug5 25 25 0
2 Nug6 43 48 11.62
3 Nug7 74 74 0
4 Nug8 107 116 8.41
5 Nug12 289 296 2.42
6 Nug15 575 592 2.95
7 Nug20 1304 1314 0.76
8 Nug30 3062 3482 13.71
Table 2. Comparison of proposed heuristic solution (H-1) with other construction heuristic on Nugent et al. (1968) test problems.
CRAFT H63 HC 63-66 Revised Hillier Drezner (1987)

Proposed
N Max. Min. Avg. Max. Min. Avg. Max. Min. Avg. Max. Min. Avg. FLAC FATE TAA Avg. heuristic (H-1)
5 29 25 27 29 25 27 31 29 30 25 25 25 25 26 25 – 25
6 46 43 44.5 46 43 44.5 46 43 44.5 43 43 43 43 50.6 43 47.5 48
7 84 74 79 120 87 103.5 82 77 79.5 – – – 74 78 74 – 74
8 124 107 115.5 124 109 116.5 118 107 112.5 109 107 108 107 126.7 116 118.8 116
12 308 289 298.5 326 301 313.5 315 304 309.5 307 291 299 289 326.2 314 322.2 296
15 640 583 611.5 659 617 638 611 578 594.5 – – – 585 660.8 596 630.8 592
20 1354 1324 1339 1427 1384 1405.5 1365 1319 1342 – – – 1303 1436.3 1414 1416.4 1314
30 3273 3148 3210.5 3282 3244 3263 3255 3161 3208 3153 3070 3111.5 3079 3390.6 3326 3436.4 3482
S. P. Singh and R. R. K. Sharma
Results for comparison have been taken from Heragu and Kusiak (1988) and Drezner (1987).
maximum change (Zmax), average change (Zavg) and ZHSolBest. Zmin is the
difference of two good solutions in K trials. Zmax is the difference of best and worst
solutions in K trials. Zavg is the average change in the solution. ZHSolBest is the
difference of best known solution available in the literature and the heuristic
solution. The expressions of TI (initial temperature) and TF (final temperature)
include the terms Zmin, Zmax, Zavg, and ZHSolBest. This enables us to have a
range of TI and TF driven by quality of solution obtained in n (n 1)/2 trials. This
approach is the extension of Connolly (1990) and Misevicius (2003). Connolly only
used Zmin and Zmax for initializing the temperatures. Thus, TI and TF can be
expressed as:

TI ¼ 1 1 01 001 Zmin þ 1 Zmax þ 01 Zavg þ 001 ZHSolBest ð7Þ

TF ¼ 1 2 02 002 Zmin þ 2 Zmax þ 02 Zavg þ 002 ZHSolBest , ð8Þ
where 1, 01 , 001 , 2, 02 and 002 are real numbers varying in the range [0,1] and are
referred to as temperature factors. On fixing the temperature factors to 1 ¼ 1/10,
01 ¼ 0, 001 ¼ 0, 2 ¼ 0, 02 ¼ 0 and 002 ¼ 0 we obtain expressions for TI and TF as
given by Connolly (1990). Misevicius (2003) did not consider Zmax and ZHSolBest
in making the expression for TI and TF. Here, all the terms have been considered in
the expression of initial and final temperature values. Hence, the proposed modified
simulated annealing algorithm works with these temperature factors and other terms.
Temperature factors and values of other terms have to be fixed before running the
simulated annealing procedure. By selecting the appropriate values of the
temperature factors the cooling phenomena of the simulated annealing process can
be controlled. For instance, setting high initial temperature will require high value
for 1 and vice versa. Similarly, for fast cooling rate we need to assign high value for
1 and low values for 2, 02 and 002 .
For the annealing scheme in the modified simulated annealing set epoch length L
to n (n 1)/2. Start with the initial temperature TI given by equation (7) and
decrease it down to the value given by equation (8). Inverse function of the cooling
schedule given in sub-section 4.3 is adopted for updating the temperature and the
value of is determined by the equation ¼ (TI TF)/M TI TF that was proposed
by Connolly (1990). The execution of the MSA terminates when the iteration exceeds
the pre-defined number of iterations ‘Q’. All the parameters of the proposed MSA
can be collected in the so called meta-schedule given in table 3. Table 4 enlists various
parameters used in simulated annealing by Wilhelm and Ward (1987), Heragu
and Alfa (1992) and Laursen (1993). Detailed analysis can be found in these papers.
The working philosophy of the two-level solution methodology can be viewed
from figure 1.
6. Computational experiments and results
The heuristic H-1 proposed in sub-section 5.1 was solved in LINGO 8, a commercial
optimization software package. The proposed MSA based heuristic program was
coded in Cþþ and executed on a Pentium IV of 2.4 GHz having 512 MB RAM.
10
Table 3. Meta-schedule table for proposed new modified simulated annealing.
Epoch (Schedule) length N ¼ n (n 1)/2
Initial temperature TI ¼ ð1 1 01 001 ÞZmin þ 1 Zmax þ 01 Zavg þ 001 ZHSolBest
Final temperature TF ¼ ð1 2 02 002 ÞZmin þ 2 Zmax þ 02 Zavg þ 002 ZHSolBest
Cooling schedule tk
tkþ1 ¼
1 þ tk
Updating function
for the value of
¼ ðTI TF Þ=M TI TF ; M ¼ 1
Number of iterations Q
to be examined before
termination of MSA
Temperature factors
value 1 ¼ 0:5, 01 ¼ 0, 001 ¼ 0, 2 ¼ 0, 02 ¼ 0, and 002 ¼ 0
Table 4. Various parameters used in CSA1, CSA2 and CSA3 given by Heragu and Alfa (1992), Laursen (1993) and
Wilhelm and Ward (1987) respectively.
CSA1 CSA2 CSA3
Initial temperature, TI ¼ 999 Initial temperature, TI ¼ 1000 Initial temperature is set by user.
Final temperature, TF ¼ 0.9 TI Final temperature, TF ¼ 1 Final temperature TF ¼ 10 0.9(i1)
Cooling schedule, r ¼ 0.9 Cooling schedule, TF ¼ n Fa Da
Other constant Other constant
NOVER (maximum number of ‘n’ is the problem size
solution evaluated at each Fa is the average flow matrix. J ¼ N0 n
temperature) ¼ 100 n Da is the average distance matrix N0 ¼ Constant
n ¼ Problem size
NLIMIT (Maximum number of Other constant J ¼ Total number of interchange
new solution to be accepted NL ¼ 216 is constant attempted at the current temperature
at each temperature) ¼ 10 n
‘n’ is the problem size
Two-level modified SA based approach for solving FLP
11
Construction heuristic
Relax the QAP by dropping
integer constraint.
H-1
Apply H-1 to get starting

solution for H-2.
Define MSA (H-2) parameters:

Q, cooling schedule.
Calculate TI and TF.
Apply cooling schedule for

Improvement heuristic
updating temperature H-2
Update number of iteration (q).
then If
q <Q
else
Stop and print the best
solution obtained so far.
Figure 1. Architecture of two-level solution methodology.
The computing time was recorded in seconds. The performance of the proposed
methodology was tested for forty-four problem instances taken from Burkard et al.
(1997) and the layout solution from H-1 and H-2 is tabulated in table 5 along with
the percentage deviation from optimal/best known solution. Table 5 shows that for
most of the problem instances the proposed heuristic H-1 gave solutions that were
very close to the optimal solution and with the application of H-2 the optimal
solution/near optimal solution was obtained.
Table 6 presents the comparative analysis of the two-level MSA approach with
SA solution given by Wilhelm and Ward (1987), Heragu and Alfa (1992) and
Laursen (1993) on the data sets of Nugent et al. (1968) which shows that the MSA
solution is better than the previously proposed SA solution.
The proposed MSA algorithm terminated on exceeding the pre-defined number
of iterations. Therefore, the solution quality of the results can be improved by
increasing the value of ‘Q’ but at the cost of computational time. Tables 7 and 8
show the objective function value and computational time for different values of
‘Q’ respectively.
Table 5. Solution obtained on the problem instances taken from Burkard et al. (1997).
S. No. Instance Optimal solution H-1 solution % Dev. H-2 solution % Dev. Final assignment
1 Nug5 25 25 0 25 0 {4,1,5,2,3}
2 Nug6 43 48 11.62 43 0 {1,2,3,4,5,6}
3 Nug7 74 74 0 74 0 {1,2,4,5,3,7,6}
4 Nug8 107 116 8.41 107 0 {3,8,7,6,2,1,4,5}
5 Nug12 289 296 2.42 289 0 {12,7,9,3,4,8,11,1,5,6,10,2}
6 Chr12a 4776 7509 57.22 4776 0 {7,5,12,2,1,3,9,11,10,6,8,4}
7 Chr12b 4871 5814 19.35 4871 0 {5,7,1,10,11,3,4,2,9,6,12,8}
8 Chr12c 5578 6536 17.17 5593 0.26 {7,5,1,3,10,4,8,6,9,11,2,12}
9 Had12 826 833 0.84 826 0 {3,10,11,2,12,5,6,7,8,1,4,9}
10 Rou12 117 764 133 468 13.33 117 764 0 {6,5,11,9,2,8,3,1,12,7,4,10}
11 Scr12 15 705 17 738 12.94 15 705 0 {8,6,3,2,10,1,5,9,4,7,12,11}
12 Tai12a 112 208 122 574 9.23 112 208 0 {8,1,6,2,11,10,3,5,9,7,12,4}
13 Tai12b 39 464 925 40 067 260 1.5 39 476 353 0.03 {6,4,9,3,11,7,12,2,8,10,1,5}
14 Had14 1362 1364 0.14 1362 0 {8,13,10,5,12,11,2,14,3,6,7,1,9,4}
15 Chr15a 4948 8373 69.21 4948 0 {5,10,8,13,12,11,14,2,4,6,7,15,3,1,9}
16 Chr15b 3995 5041 26.18 4105 2.7 {4,13,15,1,5,2,9,12,6,14,7,8,11,10,3}
17 Chr15c 4752 8996 89.3 5299 11.5 {2,13,7,5,1,8,6,14,10,9,12,3,15,11,4}
18 Nug 15 575 592 2.95 575 0 {10,15,7,1,6,5,2,4,14,3,11,13,9,8,12}
19 Rou 15 177 105 182 847 3.24 178 372 0.71 {12,11,4,14,7,3,5,2,15,1,9,10,8,13,6}
20 Scr15 25 570 28 041 9.66 25 570 0 {15,7,11,8,1,4,3,2,12,6,13,5,14,10,9}
21 Tai15a 194 107 201 039 3.57 194 859 {6,4,10,13,14,1,5,15,7,2,8,12,3,11,9}
22 Tai15b 25 882 634 26 006 170 0.47 26 006 170 0.47 {13,1,15,4,12,6,11,7,8,2,14,9,5,3,10}
23 Esc16a 34 34 0 34 0 {16,12,4,3,14,6,5,15,7,8,9,1,11,2,10,13}
24 Esc16b 146 152 4.1 146 0 {6,3,7,5,13,1,15,2,4,11,9,14,10,12,8,16}
25 Esc16c 80 82 2.5 80 0 {11,14,10,16,12,8,9,3,13,6,5,7,15,2,1,4}

26 Esc16h 498 498 0 498 0 {8,5,6,13,16,11,12,14,15,9,10,2,1,4,3,7}
27 Had16 1860 1860 0 1860 0 {9,4,16,1,7,8,6,14,15,11,12,10,5,3,2,13}
28 Tai17a 245 906 250 945 2.04 245 906 0 {12,2,6,7,4,8,14,5,11,3,16,13,17,9,1,10,15}
29 Chr18a 5549 7168 29.17 5644 1.71 {6,18,15,2,10,9,11,16,5,14,1,8,4,17,7,3,12,13}
30 Chr18b 767 896 16.81 767 0 {1,2,4,3,5,6,8,9,7,12,10,11,13,14,16,15,17,18}
(continued )
13
14
Table 5. Continued.
S. No. Instance Optimal solution H-1 solution % Dev. H-2 solution % Dev. Final assignment
31 Had18 2679 2692 0.48 2679 0 {3,20,7,18,9,12,19,4,10,11,1,6,15,8,2,5,14,16,13,17}

32 Chr20a 1096 1412 28.83 1096 0 {3,20,7,18,9,12,19,4,10,11,1,6,15,8,2,5,14,16,13,17}
33 Chr20b 1149 1382 20.27 1149 0 {20,3,9,7,1,12,16,6,8,14,10,4,5,13,17,2,18,11,19,15}
34 Chr20c 7071 12549 77.41 7071 0 {11,9,12,7,2,10,16,4,17,18,3,13,15,14,5,20,19,1,8,6}
35 Had20 3461 3486 0.72 3461 0 {8,15,16,14,19,6,7,17,1,12,10,11,5,20,2,3,4,9,18,13}
36 Nug20 1285 1314 2.25 1285 0 {18,14,10,3,9,4,2,12,11,16,19,15,20,8,13,17,5,7,1,6}
37 Rou20 362 761 367 656 1.34 363 010 0.06 {4,14,20,17,18,11,13,8,1,5,19,9,16,7,15,10,12,3,2,6}
38 Scr20 55 015 56 690 3.04 56 189 2.13 {20,19,10,15,18,16,14,13,9,6,8,7,1,5,2,4,3,12,11,17}
39 Tai20a 351 741 364 859 3.72 352 480 0.21 {13,4,18,17,3,14,11,9,6,2,10,12,16,15,8,1,5,19,7,20}
40 Tai20b 122 455 319 137 318 100 12.13 129 312 968 5.6 {7,17,6,3,14,2,1,9,8,19,13,4,15,10,11,16,5,18,20,12}
41 Chr22a 3078 3757 22.05 3254 5.7 {11,1,22,7,5,2,6,14,8,10,16,3,15,13,21,18,19,20,4,12,17,9}
42 Chr22b 3097 3983 28.6 3362 8.5 {7,11,9,1,18,2,22,10,17,13,3,21,6,4,16,14,8,19,12,20,15,5}
43 Chr25a 1898 2635 38.83 1898 0 {25,12,5,3,18,4,16,8,20,10,14,6,15,23,24,19,13,1,21,11,17,2,22,7,9}
44 Nug30 3062 3482 13.71 3064 0.06 {14,5,28,24,1,3,16,15,10,9,21,2,4,29,25,22,13,26,17,
30,6,20,19,8,18,7,27,12,11,23}
Table 6. Solution of modified simulated annealing on the problem instances of Nugent et al. (1968). CSA1, CSA2 and CSA3 have been taken from
Heragu and Alfa (1992), Laursen (1993) and Wilhelm and Ward (1987).
CSA1 CSA2 CSA3 MSA

N BKS OFV OFV OFV OFV Final assignment of facility to location
5 25 25 – 25 25 {4,1,5,2,3}
6 43 43 – 43 43 {1,2,3,4,5,6}
7 74 74 – 74 74 {1,2,4,5,3,7,6}
8 107 107 – 107 107 {3,8,7,6,2,1,4,5}
12 289 291 – 289 289 {12,7,9,3,4,8,11,1,5,6,10,2}
15 575 577 575.57 578.2 575 {10,15,7,1,6,5,2,4,14,3,11,13,9,8,12}
20 1285 1295.6 1297.96 1308 1285 {18,14,10,3,9,4,2,12,11,16,19,15,20,8,13,17,5,7,1,6}
30 3062 3107.8 3088.89 3099.8 3064 {14,5,28,24,1,3,16,15,10,9,21,2,4,29,25,22,13,26,
17,30,6,20,19,8,18,7,27,12,11,23}
BKS refers to Best Known Solution and OFV refers to Objective Function Value.
Bold values refer to our Objective Function Value (OFV).
15
16
Table 7. Computational results of H-2 (MSA) for different values of Q.
S. No. Instance Q ¼ 50 Q ¼ 100 Q ¼ 150 Q ¼ 200 Q ¼ 250 Q ¼ 300 Q ¼ 350 Q ¼ 400
1 Nug5 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25
2 Nug6 50 43 43 43 43 43 43 43
3 Nug7 85 74 74 74 74 74 74 74
4 Nug8 115 107 107 107 107 107 107 107
5 Nug12 289 289 289 289 289 289 289 289
6 Chr12a 4776 4776 4776 4776 4776 4776 4776 4776
7 Chr12b 4871 4871 4871 4871 4871 4871 4871 4871
8 Chr12c 5593 5593 5593 5593 5593 5593 5593 5593
9 Had12 826 826 826 826 826 826 826 826
10 Rou12 119 067 117 826 117 764 117 764 117 764 117 764 117 764 117 764
11 Scr12 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705
12 Tai12a 112 208 112 208 112 208 112 208 112 208 112 208 112 208 112 208
13 Tai12b 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353 39 477 353
14 Had14 1362 1362 1362 1362 1362 1362 1362 1362
15 Chr15a 5636 5310 5235 4948 4948 4948 4948 4948
16 Chr15b 4561 4469 4360 4320 4582 4313 4105 4105
17 Chr15c 5374 5299 5299 5299 5299 5299 5299 5299
18 Nug15 575 575 575 575 575 575 575 575
19 Rou15 181 802 178 372 178 327 178 372 178 372 178 372 178 372 178 372
20 Scr15 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705 15 705
21 Tai15a 195 761 195 761 195 218 195 129 194 859 194 859 194 859 194 859
22 Tai15b 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170 26 006 170
23 Esc16a 34 34 34 34 34 34 34 34
24 Esc16b 152 146 146 146 146 146 146 146
25 Esc16c 80 80 80 80 80 80 80 80
26 Esc16h 498 498 498 498 498 498 498 498
27 Had16 1860 1860 1860 1860 1860 1860 1860 1860
28 Tai17a 245 906 245 906 245 906 245 906 245 906 245 906 245 906 245 906
29 Chr18a 6607 6407 5884 5884 5844 5844 5844 5844
30 Chr18b 767 767 767 767 767 767 767 767
31 Had18 2679 2679 2679 2679 2679 2679 2679 2679
32 Chr20a 1386 1240 1236 1164 1104 1096 1096 1096
33 Chr20b 1357 1315 1315 1291 1291 1244 1149 1149
34 Chr20c 10 840 9451 8945 8509 8423 7834 7071 7071
35 Had20 3461 3461 3461 3461 3461 3461 3461 3461
36 Nug 20 1298 1292 1285 1285 1285 1285 1285 1285
37 Rou20 368 678 368 570 367 240 367 240 363 010 363 010 363 010 363 010
38 Scr20 56 440 56 238 56 189 56 189 56 189 56 189 56 189 56 189
39 Tai20a 362 820 352 480 352 480 352 480 352 480 352 480 352 480 352 480
40 Tai20b 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484 64 656 484
41 Chr22a 3402 3412 3354 3354 3354 3354 3354 3354
42 Chr22b 3413 3413 3413 3390 3390 3382 3362 3362
43 Chr25a 1898 1898 1898 1898 1898 1898 1898 1898
44 Nug30 3188 3106 3106 3068 3064 3064 3064 3064
Bold values refer to best objective function value obtained for the first time for a given problem instance.
17
Table 8. CPU time (on P IV of 2.4 GHz with 512 MB RAM) of H-1 and H-2 in seconds.
H-2
S. No. Instance H-1 Q ¼ 50 Q ¼ 100 Q ¼ 150 Q ¼ 200 Q ¼ 250 Q ¼ 300 Q ¼ 350 Q ¼ 400
1 Nug5 0 3 4 4 5 7 7 8 9
2 Nug6 0 3 4 5 5 7 8 9 10
3 Nug7 0 3 5 5 6 9 9 10 13
4 Nug8 1 4 5 7 8 9 12 13 15
5 Nug12 13 5 7 10 12 15 17 19 23
6 Chr12a 16 5 7 10 12 14 18 20 24
7 Chr12b 15 5 8 11 14 16 19 22 26
8 Chr12c 16 6 8 10 12 14 16 19 22
9 Had12 16 5 8 11 13 16 18 21 25
10 Rou12 14 5 7 9 11 14 16 18 21
11 Scr12 15 5 7 9 12 15 18 20 23
12 Tai12a 15 4 7 9 11 15 17 18 20
13 Tai12b 16 7 12 17 21 25 29 33 37
14 Had14 28 6 11 15 18 23 27 30 36
15 Chr15a 40 6 8 12 18 19 22 25 29
16 Chr15b 43 5 8 12 15 19 23 27 29
17 Chr15c 41 6 9 12 14 19 22 24 28
18 Nug15 42 7 10 13 19 21 24 27 31
19 Rou15 45 7 9 11 15 17 20 24 26
20 Scr15 46 6 11 14 17 22 25 28 32
21 Tai15a 46 5 8 10 14 17 20 24 27
22 Tai15b 42 7 11 15 19 23 27 30 35
23 Esc16a 43 5 7 8 10 14 14 16 18
24 Esc16b 46 5 6 6 9 12 12 13 14
25 Esc16c 46 5 7 10 13 16 18 20 22
26 Esc16h 44 6 7 10 11 14 15 17 21
27 Had16 46 7 13 18 23 27 33 37 42
28 Tai17a 58 6 10 13 16 19 22 24 28
29 Chr18a 70 7 10 14 17 23 28 31 33
30 Chr18b 71 8 10 15 21 24 27 31 34
31 Had18 71 8 13 19 25 30 35 40 47
32 Chr20a 92 7 11 17 21 26 29 35 39
33 Chr20b 92 9 11 18 19 24 28 40 35
34 Chr20c 93 8 15 20 25 31 36 41 47
35 Had20 94 13 17 23 28 34 40 47 54
36 Nug 20 90 8 12 17 24 27 33 38 42
37 Rou20 92 6 11 15 19 23 28 32 35
38 Scr20 92 8 15 19 24 30 35 40 45
39 Tai20a 89 7 11 15 20 21 27 31 35
40 Tai20b 98 11 22 27 35 43 50 60 69
41 Chr22a 126 7 13 20 21 25 29 33 38
42 Chr22b 126 7 11 16 20 24 29 33 37
43 Chr25a 540 9 15 20 27 32 39 44 51
44 Nug30 1813 13 21 31 39 47 56 65 74
7. Conclusions
In this paper, a new heuristic (H-1) was given to produce an initial solution for the
QAP. We presented here a modified SA (MSA) procedure to improve the
starting solution. A number of problems have been tested and it showed that the
method presented in this paper has merit.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to put on record their appreciation to anonymous learned
referees for their valuable suggestions, which have substantially enhanced the quality
of the paper over earlier versions.
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© Taylor and Francis 2007

Two-level modified simulated annealing based approach for solving

S. P. SINGH* and R. R. K. SHARMA

Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Indian Institute

(Revision received December 2006)

Keywords: Facility layout; Quadratic assignment problem; Simulated annealing

The FLP is a well researched problem. Locating facilities in a given space is a

*Corresponding author. Email: sprsingh@iitk.ac.in

International Journal of Production Research

Xij 2 f0, 1g: ð4Þ

procedure given in sub-section 5.2. Now in section 4, a brief overview of the SA

4. Overview of simulated annealing

The SA is a useful meta-heuristic for solving hard combinatorial optimization

4.1 Initial temperature

4.2 Epoch length

4.3 Cooling (annealing) schedule

4.4 Stopping criteria

5. Two-level MSA based approach

5.1 First level heuristic (H-1)

5.1.2 Illustrative example. To illustrate the steps of H-1, a problem of size n ¼ 5 is

5.2 Second level meta-heuristic (H-2): MSA

Table 1. Proposed heuristic (H-1) solution on instances taken from

S. No. Instance Optimal solution H-1 Solution % Deviation

CRAFT H63 HC 63-66 Revised Hillier Drezner (1987)

6. Computational experiments and results

Table 3. Meta-schedule table for proposed new modified simulated annealing.

Epoch (Schedule) length N ¼ n (n 1)/2

CSA1 CSA2 CSA3

Apply H-1 to get starting

Define MSA (H-2) parameters:

Calculate TI and TF.

Apply cooling schedule for

updating temperature H-2

Update number of iteration (q).

Figure 1. Architecture of two-level solution methodology.

25 Esc16c 80 82 2.5 80 0 {11,14,10,16,12,8,9,3,13,6,5,7,15,2,1,4}

31 Had18 2679 2692 0.48 2679 0 {3,20,7,18,9,12,19,4,10,11,1,6,15,8,2,5,14,16,13,17}

CSA1 CSA2 CSA3 MSA

Table 7. Computational results of H-2 (MSA) for different values of Q.

S. No. Instance Q ¼ 50 Q ¼ 100 Q ¼ 150 Q ¼ 200 Q ¼ 250 Q ¼ 300 Q ¼ 350 Q ¼ 400

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