Measuring Facility Layout Complexity

A new method for the measurement of the complexity of a facility layout problem is described which can be viewed as the degree of ease (unease) with which a given number of facilities can be optimally arranged. The existing approaches, namely, coefficient of variation and problem complexity rating, do not always produce consistent results. In the proposed approach, a cost matrix is converted into a similarity coefficient matrix and the standard deviation of the elemental values of a similarity coefficient matrix is used to determine layout complexity. The application of the proposed approach is illustrated through examples and the results are shown to be consistent and reasonably acceptable.