Abstract
In the planning of multi-floor chemical batch plants, consideration of various preferences about equipment arrangement is necessary because of the amount of manual operation involved. These preferences are generally expressed as equations that change with conditions, and it is not easy to find the optimum equipment arrangement. In this proposed method for equipment arrangement, “components,” the elements of arrangement, are made up of equipment units of common size or parts of large ones, and are respectively assigned to “positions” given at each floor. Preferences are expressed as items that are weighted according to preferable configurations between components. The objective function is the summation of weights of unsatisfied preferences. This problem is represented by an integer programming model resulting from the input of many considerations, including for example the introduction of dummy variables. An explanation of the formulation and its effectiveness is illustrated by example problems.
