Solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems with Differential Evolution and Particle Swarm Optimization

The unequal area facility layout problem (UAFLP) is a problem in industrial engineering that aims to minimize material handling costs between a group of unequal-shaped facilities. In this study, Differential Evolution (DE) with continuous variables and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are employed to solve the UAFLP. This study also compares the performance of the DE method (never used to solve UAFLP) and the PSO method (frequently used to solve facility layout problems). The experimental results demonstrate that PSO is effective in solving small-sized datasets, while DE works well in solving datasets with larger areas.