Facilities layout generalized model solved by n-boundary shortest path heuristics (Q1820668)

Classical plant layout problems consist in finding the adjacency graph of several facilities which maximizes the benefit obtained, by accounting all the effective adjacencies. In this paper this simple view is extended in the following manner: for each pair of facilities and each natural number k, the benefit in {\$} is supposed to be known of having a shortest path of length k between both facilities. One then asks for the adjacency graph which maximizes the total benefit, taking into account all the shortest path distances between any pair of facilities. In this paper two heuristics for the classical plant layout problem, Deltahedron and Greedy [see \textit{L. R. Foulds}, Oper. Res. 33, 1091-1106 (1985)], are modified so as to solve - suboptimally - the generalized problem. Some computational results show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.