Assisted Facility Layout Planning for Sustainable Automotive Assembly

Decisions in factory layout planning can be considered multi-dimensional and complex since they need to cope with numerous partially conflicting boundary conditions and objectives. However, they do have a significant impact on long-term efficiency and flexibility. Due to rising needs in this area, an assisted solution for optimizing factory layout planning is required. Generative Design (GD) is a summarizing term for iterative, mostly nature-analogue approaches that support an efficient analysis of large design spaces, allowing to effortlessly achieve mathematically optimized solutions not usually achievable by traditional methods. Although there have been decades of research on the underlying principles, generative planning of spatial arrangements for manufacturing facilities still lacks behind its potential. Therefore, the proposed paper will begin with a structured overview of terminology and different factory planning requirements, followed by possible mathematical approaches for facility layout planning problems (FLP) in manufacturing. Special attention is drawn to sustainability aspects, defining the requirements to be considered in an automated design and including empirical knowledge in complex scenarios. The paper finishes with the derivation of identified future research areas.