Spacecraft for Multi-Floor Layout Planning

Abstract

A descriptive problem definition and a tested computerized heuristic solution procedure are offered for the problem of relative location of facilities in (or layout of) a multi-floor building. The problem definition and solution procedure overcome the problem of severe nonlinearity of inter-department movement times relative to distance, which enter the multi-floor problem because of the indirectness of routing, and because of different movement speeds compared with the single floor case. Both the definition and solution procedure are application-oriented, concentrating on practical aspects of multi-floor space allocation. Substantial savings in an implementation are reported. The procedure is particularly relevant to planning for an organization moving into a new multi-floor building. Additionally, the procedure can be used, without modification, for an organization spread over more than one building, and for single floor facilities. The possibility of alternative inter-floor routings is incorporated.production/scheduling: materials handling, facilities/equipment planning: layout, networks/graphs: applications

Optimization of material hoisting operations and storage locations in multi-storey building construction by mixed-integer programming

“…The problem can be solved by different heuristic methods in existing computer packages such as the SPACECRAFT [11], MULTIPLE [12], BLOCPLAN [13], SABLE [14]. These algorithms are considering the use of elevators for vertical transportation of materials using SFC (Space Filling Curve) to avoid the facility split between floors and applying an SA-based (Simulated Annealing) search instead of the steepest descent search for a better solution quality and a lesser computational efforts [15].…”

MULTI-HOPE: A tool for multiple floor layout problems

“…The ® nal solution produced by CRAFT-3D is highly dependent on the starting solution. Johnson (1982) proposed an algorithm called SPACECRAFT, which is quite similar to CRAFT-3D. The main di erence between the two is that SPACE-CRAFT can incorporate nonlinear cost parameters by making an allowance for the waiting times.…”

“…While SPACECRAFT transforms the multi-¯oor problem to a single-¯oor problem by appending the¯oors to a single¯oor, this may lead to a department that is split across multiple¯oors (Bozer et al 1994). In addition, the e ect of splitting departments on vertical and horizontal interactions has not been considered by Johnson (1982). Like CRAFT and CRAFT-3D, SPACECRAFT may generate impractical shapes for departments, and the ® nal solution generated may only be a local optimal solution.…”

Erratum

“…Figure 1 is an attempt to present in chronological order, a non-exhaustive survey of the most representative and historical computer software for facility layout. Each box contains the name of the program and the year of reference, followed by the name(s) of the author(s) [4,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. It is important to point out that CRAFT (Computerized Relative Allocation of Facilities Technique) developed by Armour and Buffa [26] seems to be the first package available for commercial purposes.…”