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In this paper we introduce the use of spacefilling curves in facility layout, and we extend a well-known facility layout algorithm () to facilities with multiple floors. Spacefilling curves make it possible to exchange any two departments and to use more powerful exchange routines than two-way or three-way exchanges. We also further enhance CRAFT by controlling department shapes, and (with multiple floors) by allowing "flexible" departmental area requirements. Although the algorithm we present can be used for any single-floor or multi-floor facility layout problem, its primary target is production facilities. A tailored version of the algorithm was successfully tested and used in a large, multi-floor production facility. The algorithm differs significantly from two previous extensions of to multi-floor facilities.facility layout, improvement heuristics, multi-floor facilities, layout algorithms

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This research considers a multi-item newsvendor problem with a single capacity constraint. While this problem has been addressed in the literature, the focus here is on developing simple, closed-form expressions for the order quantities. The benefit of such an approach is that the solutions are straightforward to calculate and have managerial appeal. Additionally, we show these expressions to be optimal under a variety of conditions. For more general cases when these optimality conditions do not hold, we use these expressions as heuristic solutions. Via computational studies, we demonstrate that these heuristics are extremely effective when the optimality conditions are not satisfied.