Automation in Construction 19 (2010) 656663

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Automation in Construction
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / a u t c o n

Letter to the Editor

Optimization of material hoisting operations and storage
locations in multi-storey building construction by mixed-integer
programming

Keywords:
Mixed-integer programming
Multi-storey building
Material storage layout

transportation distance dm,n measuring the rectilinear distance from the

centroids of location m to location n [6].
A quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is classied as a difcult
problem in the NP-hard class that was introduced to design plant
locations [7,8]. It has become one of the various model formulations to
solve layout design problems. Based on the parameters above, the total
interplant transportation cost could be set as the objective function for
optimization [9].
J

Min

i=1 j=1 m=1 n=1


fi;j ci;j dm;n xi;m xj;n

1. Introduction
The scarcity of land supply resulting in high land costs in most
metropolitan cities like Hong Kong forces to generate a great demand
for high-rise buildings. With limited space in such multi-storey building
construction sites for material storages, well planning of the available
areas within a congested construction site becomes a real challenge and
is an important issue in the domain of construction management. To
cope with such construction conditions, especially in a multi-storey
building construction, practitioners in the industry relying much on
experiences always lack a well-dened approach to reach an optimal
site layout during construction [1,2].
In a site layout planning problem, conicts in competing available
space for different usages exist and have been identied as the major
cause of loss in productivity [3]. Problems due to improper planning of
using the available space can be accounting up to 65% loss in actual
efciency [4]. Owing to the inadequate material storage areas in
construction sites of multi-storey buildings, lower oors of a building
after being built and developing sufcient structural strength are
temporarily used to store construction materials so as to reduce the
material transportation times and improve the overall construction
efciency. It was found that material transportation times were 50%
greater than the actual times spent on construction works that consume
about 40% of working hours in a multi-storey building construction [5].
It is believed that good utilization of completed oors as storage places
could speed up the material transportation and reduce subsequent
transportation costs during construction periods and surely improve the
overall construction efciency.
This paper presents the work for the design of a storage layout plan
in those completed oors in a multi-storey building taking into
considerations of both the horizontal movements in between various
storage cells and the hoist system as well as the vertical transportation of
materials in different oors.

2. Literature review
From the literature, the layout efciency is generally assessed in terms
of the total material handling cost. The costs are calculated using the
following parameters: interdepartmental ows fi, j prescribing the material
ow from facility i to facility j, unit transportation cost ci, j specifying the
cost to move one unit load in one unit distance from facility i to facility j,
0926-5805/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2010.02.005

Mathematically, facilities' locations can be represented by a

permutation matrix containing a set of binary-type integer variables,
xi,m, with each row sum and each column sum being 1 to ensure a oneto-one mapping relationship. Each entry of the matrix represents the
assigned location for the corresponding facility. Eq. (2) illustrates a
sample 4 4 facility and location relationship. The quadratic assignment
problem (QAP) could be formulated as a problem of minimizing the
objective function (1) with respect to the permutation variables. Its
nature is quadratic because there is a product term of two binary
variables in the formulation [10].

1
2
Facilities
3
4

Locations
21 2 3 4
0 0 0 1
60 1 0 0
6
41 0 0 0
0 0 1 0

3
h i
7
7 = xi; j
5

To optimize the layout of a multi-oor building, the parameters

dm,n and ci,j in Eq. (1) can be further expanded to distinguish the
horizontal and vertical distances making use of different types of
transportation equipments. If the facilities are located on the same oor,
relevant vertical transportation cost should be vanished. Based on the
dened variables, the multi-oor layout optimization problem could
then be formulated adopting the objective function given in Eq. (3).



H H
V V
Min ci; j dm;n + ci; j dm;n fi; j xi;m xj;n
i

The problem can be solved by different heuristic methods in existing

computer packages such as the SPACECRAFT [11], MULTIPLE [12],
BLOCPLAN [13], SABLE [14]. These algorithms are considering the use of
elevators for vertical transportation of materials using SFC (Space Filling
Curve) to avoid the facility split between oors and applying an
SA-based (Simulated Annealing) search instead of the steepest descent
search for a better solution quality and a lesser computational efforts
[15].
To optimize the objective function in Eq. (3) with a more efcient
and practical manner, various solution algorithms incorporating
different features have been developed. The two-stage method
presented by Meller and Bozer [15], for instance, has split the

Letter to the Editor

optimization procedures to separate the vertical and horizontal material

transport costs for analysis. The vertical factors in Eq. (3) have been
extracted to form a new objective function given in Eq. (4) in the rst
stage.
N

Min fi; j ci; j dk;g xi;k xj; g

xi;k ;xj; g i = 1 j = 1 k = 1 g = 1

where dVk, g represents the vertical distance between oors k and g,

xi,k and xj, g are binary variables representing the locations of facilities i
and j on different oors of k and g. In the second stage, another
objective function as given in Eq. (5) taking into account mainly the
total horizontal costs is optimized so as to x the lift position l.



H
H
H
di; j = Min di;l + dl; j
l

where dH
i,l designates the horizontal rectilinear distance from the
centroid of facility i to the lift l [16]. In their approach, each facility is
rstly assigned to one of the oors in the rst stage and the optimized
layout is then determined on each oor in the second stage. As the
facility locations determined in the rst stage will be xed in the
second stage, the optimized solution would be suboptimal. Since
the problem size in each of the two stages can be greatly reduced, the
whole computational process can be speeded up.
Lee and Ma [17] modied the objective function in Eq. (3) to include
the possibility of assigning multiple facilities into one single available
location as long as the physical site conditions fulll all dimensional
requirements. This relaxation increases the complexity of the problem
dramatically and three Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations
and a branch-and-bound algorithm to optimize the problem are
presented. The Multi-Storey Space Assignment Problem (MASP) allows
modeling the locations of facilities of unequal sizes within multi-storey
facilities and introduces a Poisson arrival rate to simulate the occupants'
evacuation in the building simultaneously. In the model, an exact
solution method is proposed based on a rst-level Reformulation
Linearization Technique (RLT) dual ascent procedure. [1820].
Facility layout planning in a multi-storey building formulated as QAP
is a NP-complete combinatorial optimization problem. Quadratic terms
in the QAP formulation can be simplied by replacing with linear terms
turning into a mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation. Lawler
[21] used n4 variables to represent the assignment through dening
ci,j,m,n = fi,j dm,n and yi,j,m,n = xi,m xj,n. Montreuil [22] rst applied the MIP
formulation for the facility layout and material handling problems. Easa
and Hossain [23] studied the facility allocation problem adding visual
and shape constraints in a continuous solution space for optimization
using MIP approach. Goetschalckx and Irohara [24] formulated a MultiFloor Facility Layout Problem with Elevators (MFFLPE) by modeling the
movements of elevators that may only serve two or a very few oors to
improve the material transportation efciency. In general, linearizing a
QAP into MIP will expand the problem inducing a huge number of
variables and constraints [25]. It should be well noted that linearizations
and constraint relaxations to form a MIP solved by standard procedures
such as the branch-and-bound technique could promise reaching a
global optimum solution [26].
Apart from using the exact solution algorithm, genetic algorithms
(GAs) apply probabilistic search logic [27] that operates well in all kinds
of objective functions and even non-linear solution space. Applying
genetic algorithms to optimize the material storage locations in a
building construction can be found in Adel El-Baz [28], Azadivar and
Wang [29], Kaku et al. [8], Matsuzaki et al. [30] and Fung et al. [1].
Genetic algorithms have also been applied to allocate construction
facilities [31] and optimize facility layouts [32] in construction sites. The
rst step in applying genetic algorithms is initialization. Trial solution
sets comprising solution candidates in form of chromosomes are
initialized by randomly generated binary strings with certain number

657

of bits depending on the required solution resolution. The binary strings

are then converted into decimal numbers that can be further scaled into
suitable ranges to represent the numerical values of control variables.
Fitness function values are then computed for all trial solution
candidates. The second step is the reproduction process in which the
whole binary strings associated with good tness function values will be
duplicated in the trial solution set as the chromosomes of the next
generation. The third step is the crossover in which pairs of the binary
strings are randomly mated and chosen binary bits can be randomly
exchanged. The fourth step is mutation that certain percentage of
randomly selected binary bits will be mutated (0 to 1 or 1 to 0). After
these, a new generation of the trial solution sets is produced and the
tness function values can be evaluated again for reproduction,
crossover and mutation processes. The best solution found in the
genetic process until specic number of generation in the trial solution
set is reached or some user-specied stopping criteria are met will be
the optimized solution [33].
The challenge, however, remains in nding an appropriate
problem representation that results in an efcient and successful
implementation of the algorithm [34,35]. However, global optimum
solution is not ensured.
In this paper, the material transportation in a single multi-oor
building is studied considering the interactions among material
storage cells on different oors and lift movements. We apply both
a mixed-integer programming (MIP) and genetic algorithm (GAs)
methods to optimize the problem. Solution algorithms and their
results will be compared in terms of solution quality and computing
time.

3. Problem formulation
List of symbols
j
Material types
l
Floor in a building for material storage as sources of supply
k
Cells on building oors for storage
m
Floor in a building demanding the materials
J
Total number of material types
L
Total number of storage oors in a building
K
Total number of cells in a level of a building
M
Total number of level in a building
Demand of material type j on oor m in a building
Q j,m
Horizontal unit transportation cost of material type j
Cjh
v
Vertical unit transportation cost of material type j to the
Cj,l
oor l of a building from ground
v
Vertical unit transportation cost of material type j to the
Cj,m
oor m of a building from ground
Distance from cell k to the material hoist on level l
Dl,k
Binary decision variable of storing material j inside cell k on
xj,l,k
level l
Demand of material type j on building level m
j,m
Auxiliary binary-type variable where 1 means material j is
j,l,k,m
transferred from oor l cell k to oor m but 0 otherwise
T
Total cost in the material transfer setting
N
Arbitrary large number.
Model assumptions:
Demand quantities and their physical locations are predetermined
and xed.
Only one lift is considered in the model for the material hoist.
Each storage cell area is sufciently large for storage requirements.
Lower building oors can serve as material storages after being
built.
Loading and unloading of materials in the hoist system do not
induce costs.

658

Letter to the Editor

Input information:

Quantity demanded of material type j on oor m in a building, Qj,m

Distances from cell k on level l to the material hoist, Dl,k
Horizontal unit transportation costs for material type j, Chj
Vertical unit transportation cost of material type j from ground
oor to storage oor l, Cvj,l
Vertical unit transportation cost of materials from ground oor to
oor m, Cvj,m.
The ultimate goal of formulating this problem is to minimize the
total material transportation and relevant distribution costs. To obtain
the optimal material storage locations, an objective function can be set
in Eq. (6).






J
J
L
K
M
v
h
v
v
Min Q j;m Cj;l + Dl;k Cj xj;l;k + Q j;m Cj;m Cj;l j;l;k;m
j=1 l=1 k=1

m=1 j=1

6
There are two components in calculating the total material
transportation and distribution costs in Eq. (6). The rst term includes
the initial material transportation cost moving from ground oor to a
storage oor by a material hoist (lift) comprising the horizontal
transportation cost accounting for the travel from the lift to a storage
cell. A set of binary decision variables xj,l,k is dened to represent the
material storage location. The second term in Eq. (6) can be regarded
as the total material distribution cost from the storage oor to each
building oor demanding the materials. It is expected that demands of
materials Q j,m of material type j on each oor m must be given for the
calculation. The material distribution process can be visualized from
the side view of the building in Fig. 1 and the oor plan in Fig. 2,
respectively.

In the present study, oors from levels 1 to l are lower oors of a

building and could be served as storages after being built. Different
cells are installed to represent the available locations for storage
purposes.
4. Formulation of the binary-mixed-integer-linear-programming
4.1. Constraint sets
In the present formulation, it only allows one type of material
allocating inside a specic storage cell k. Duplication of assigning more
than one material type onto one available storage cell is prohibited.
Mathematically, a set of binary-type decision variables xj,l,k is dened
and governed by constraint sets (7) and (8). In the constraint set (7),
one type of material must be stored inside one storage cell k {1, K} on
level l {1, L}. For each material type j {1, J}, J is the total number of
material type. Each available cell (location) can be assigned to store at
most one type of material or even remained an empty cell as required
by Eq. (8).
J

xj;l;k = 1; lf1; Lg; kf1; K g

j=1

xj;l;k b = 1; jf1; J g

l=1 k=1

Binary variable j,m is introduced in the present formulation to

denote the existence of demand of material type j on oor m, in which
j,m = 1 means that demand of material type j on oor m exists in a
building or j,m = 0 otherwise.

j;m =

0 if material type j is not required on level m

1 if material type j is required on level m

Depending on the input material demand Q j,m, constraint set (9)

can be set to relate j,m.
2

N j;m NQ j;m j;m ; Q j;m bN; jf1; J g; mf1; M g

Fig. 1. Side view of material hoist in high-rise building construction.

Fig. 2. Typical oor plan at oor l installing material storage cells.

Letter to the Editor

Table 1
Demand quantity of materials in each building oor.
Material
type, j

Material name

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Glasses
Floor nishes
Concrete and cement
Gypsum board suspended ceilings
Steel and aluminum
Timber and wood
Bricks and partitions
Lights
Color paints
Electric cables and wirings

659

Table 2
Horizontal distances from cell k on oor l to material hoist.
Demand of material type,
Q j,m, (in kg)
2000
1500
6000
1500
4000
3000
2500
1000
500
700

Since N is dened as an arbitrary large number (say 50,000 or

100,000), if material demand Q j,m is zero, j,m must be forced to be
zero implying no existence of demand. If there exists demand (even
very small amount), then NQ j,m, due to the magnifying effect of the
large number N, becomes large which forces j,m = 1 (j,mcannot be
zero) with the constraint set (9).
In this multi-oor material distribution problem, the total material
distribution costs are calculated based on the interactions of material
storage cells and actual demands on different oors. An auxiliary binarytype variable j,l,k,m is dened mainly to avoid the nonlinearity as in the
QAP formulation and related by the constraint set (10) associating the
decision variables xj,l,k to represent the linkage between the demand
j,m of material type j on oor m and storage of material type j on oor
l inside cell k. Numerically, if xj,l,k = 1 and j,m = 1, then the relationship
must be established forcing j,l,k,m = 1 which means that the material
type j inside a storage cell k on storage oor l is delivered to a building
oor m to compute the required transportation costs. Through Eq. (10),
the auxiliary variable j,l,k,m can further replace the product term
multiplying the two variables xj,l,k and j,m in the conventional quadratic
assignment problem converting the formulation into a mixed-integer
linear programming problem.





N 2xj;l;k j;m 1j;l;k;m ; lf1; Lg; kf1; K g; jf1; J g; mf1; Mg

10

Cell k

Dl,k (in meters)

Level l

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

15
15
15
15
15
15
15
15

20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20

15
15
15
15
15
15
15
15

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

4.2. Objective function for optimization

With the auxiliary variable j,l,k,m expressing the actual material
distribution ows, the total transportation cost of material moving
from storage cells to building oors can be calculated using Eq. (11).
In the formulation, Q j,m is the demand of material type j on a oor
m, Cj,lv and Cvj,m are the vertical unit transportation cost of material
type j to oor l and oor m from ground oor, Cjh is the horizontal unit
transportation cost of material type j, Dl,k is the horizontal travel
distance from cell k to the material hoist on oor l, and M is the total
number of oors in a building.
J

T=

j=1 l=1 k=1

!
!



J
M
L
K
h
v
Q j;m xj;l;k Dl;k Cj + Cj;l
+

m=1

Q j;m jCj;l Cj;m jj;l;k;m

j=1 l=1 k=1 m=1

11
The problem is formulated as a Binary-Mix-Integer-LinearProgramming (BMILP) problem to minimize the total material
transportation and distribution cost T given in Eq. (11) subject to
constraint sets (7)(10) and the program can be effectively solved by a
standard branch-and-bound technique. However, it should be noted
that the present formulation assumes that workers will start the work to
transport the materials to various demand oors once all required
materials are ready at storage oors. Direct transporting of the materials
from ground oor to various demand oors, which is always cheaper, is
not considered as different material types provided by different
suppliers may reach the site at different time instances and extra
handling costs may be induced for relevant administration works
complicating the whole cost evaluation.
5. Numerical example
To demonstrate the proposed Binary-Mixed-Integer-LinearProgramming (BMILP) approach and compare the solution performances optimized by the BMILP and the genetic algorithms (GAs), a
numerical example modeling a 30-storey building is given. Five
storage cells are available on storage oors (levels 1 to 8) as material
storage locations. One material hoist (lift) is installed for the vertical
transportation. Ten types of raw materials ranging from glasses to
Table 3
Horizontal transportation costs, Chj .

Fig. 3. Floor plan at oor l with 5 storage cells.

Material type, j

Cjh(in $/m/kg)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

20.0
22.5
15.0
23.0
10.0
10.0
23.0
14.0
15.0
16.0

660

Letter to the Editor

Table 4
Vertical transportation costs (in $/kg) from ground to a oor l, Cvj,l.
Floor, l

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Table 6
Optimal storage layout pattern with total cost and computation time by Genetic
Algorithms (GAs) and Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP).

Material type, j
1

10

15.0
16.2
17.4
18.6
19.8
21.0
22.2
23.4

20.0
21.2
22.4
23.6
24.8
26.0
27.2
28.4

13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4

20.0
21.2
22.4
23.6
24.8
26.0
27.2
28.4

7.0
8.2
9.4
10.6
11.8
13.0
14.2
15.4

7.0
8.2
9.4
10.6
11.8
13.0
14.2
15.4

26.0
27.2
28.4
29.6
30.8
32.0
33.2
34.4

11.0
12.2
13.4
14.6
15.8
17.0
18.2
19.4

12.0
13.2
14.4
15.6
16.8
18.0
19.2
20.4

13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4

electric cables and wirings are demanded on each oor and actual
demands are set uniform and identical for all of the 30 storeys in the
building for simplicity. Relevant input data are listed in Tables 15.
Optimization results are summarized in Tables 69. Table 1 lists all
material types considered in the numerical example and also provides
the articial demand proles of different types of materials.
Assume that the building has a total number of 30 storeys (M = 30)
and oors 18 (l = 1, , 8) are available for material storages. For each
of these storage oors, there are 5 storage cells available and the physical
layout can be referred to Fig. 3. The horizontal distances from cell k on
level l to the material hoist, Dl,k, can be directly measured in site and
given in Table 2.
To account for the physical weights and practical difculties in the
transportation process of various material types, different unit
horizontal transportation costs for different types of materials are
used according to Table 3.
In the present study, the storage cells are located on oors 18. Total
transportation costs to be optimized include the distributing costs of the
materials to each building oor. In computation, initial costs to store
various types of materials at different locations must be considered
known as the storage costs. Different vertical unit transportation costs of
material type j to a level l from ground are given in Table 4.
Table 5
Vertical transportation costs (in $/kg) from ground to a oor m, Cvj,m.
Floor, m

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

Material type, j
1

10

15.0
16.2
17.4
18.6
19.8
21.0
22.2
23.4
24.6
25.8
27.0
28.2
29.4
30.6
31.8
33.0
34.2
35.4
36.6
37.8
39.0
40.2
41.4
42.6
43.8
45.0
46.2
47.4
48.6
49.8

20.0
21.2
22.4
23.6
24.8
26.0
27.2
28.4
29.6
30.8
32.0
33.2
34.4
35.6
36.8
38.0
39.2
40.4
41.6
42.8
44.0
45.2
46.4
47.6
48.8
50.0
51.2
52.4
53.6
54.8

13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4
22.6
23.8
25.0
26.2
27.4
38.6
29.8
31.0
32.2
33.4
34.6
35.8
37.0
38.2
39.4
40.6
41.8
43.0
44.2
45.4
46.6
47.8

20.0
21.2
22.4
23.6
24.8
26.0
27.2
28.4
29.6
30.8
32.0
33.2
34.4
35.6
36.8
38.0
39.2
40.4
41.6
42.8
44.0
45.2
46.4
47.6
48.8
50.0
51.2
52.4
53.6
54.8

7.0
8.2
9.4
10.6
11.8
13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4
22.6
23.8
25.0
26.2
27.4
28.6
29.8
31.0
32.2
33.4
34.6
35.8
37.0
38.2
39.4
40.6
41.8

7.0
8.2
9.4
10.6
11.8
13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4
22.6
23.8
25.0
26.2
27.4
28.6
29.8
31.0
32.2
33.4
34.6
35.8
37.0
38.2
39.4
40.6
41.8

26.0
27.2
28.4
29.6
30.8
32.0
33.2
34.4
35.6
36.8
38.0
39.2
40.4
41.6
42.8
44.0
45.2
46.4
47.6
48.8
50.0
51.2
52.4
53.6
54.8
56.0
57.2
58.4
59.6
60.8

11.0
12.2
13.4
14.6
15.8
17.0
18.2
19.4
20.6
21.8
23.0
24.2
25.4
26.6
27.8
29.0
30.2
31.4
32.6
33.8
35.0
36.2
37.4
38.6
39.8
41.0
42.2
43.4
44.6
45.8

12.0
13.2
14.4
15.6
16.8
18.0
19.2
20.4
21.6
22.8
24.0
25.2
26.4
27.6
28.8
30.0
31.2
32.4
33.6
34.8
36.0
37.2
38.4
39.6
40.8
42.0
43.2
44.4
45.6
46.8

13.0
14.2
15.4
16.6
17.8
19.0
20.2
21.4
22.6
23.8
25.0
26.2
27.4
28.6
29.8
31.0
32.2
33.4
34.6
35.8
37.0
38.2
39.4
40.6
41.8
43.0
44.2
45.4
46.6
47.8

Material type, j

Optimized storage location (Floor l, cell k)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Optimized total cost, T
Computation time
a

GA approacha

MIP approach

(5,1)
(6,1)
(2,1)
(7,1)
(1,1)
(7,5)
(6,5)
(1,5)
(4,1)
(5,5)
4,562,620
4 min 6 s

(3,1)
(4,5)
(1,5)
(3,5)
(1,1)
(2,5)
(2,1)
(4,1)
(5,1)
(5,5)
4,293,020
8s

Details of the problem formulation and solution algorithms can be found in Fung et al. [1].

The vertical transportation costs from ground oor to building

oor m of material type j, Cvj,m, are given in Table 5.
Table 6 summarizes the optimization results of the present
numerical example giving the optimized storage cell usages on different
storage oors of the building. It is observed that the optimization results
by the MIP approach are better off. The total cost including the storage
and distribution costs T of 4,293,020 is found by MIP which is 6.28% less
than that optimized by the genetic algorithms. Only cells 1 and 5 are
used in the storage oors with least distances from the hoist system.
Almost an instant solution time is recorded in the MIP approach while
GAs take over 4 min in reaching a suboptimal solution point.
More details covering the induced storage costs for different types
of materials from ground level to corresponding storage cells, the
costs incurred from storage cells to the hoist system, and the vertical
transportation costs for distributing the materials onto building oors
to contribute the total costs can be referred to Table 7.
There is an important assumption that each building oor
demands the same amount of materials of different types in the
numerical example. The breakdown of the vertical transportation
costs for material distributions can be traced from Table 8.
Table 9 reports the statistics of the solution process by LINGO
ensuring that a true global solution point is located further conrming
that MIP outperforms the GAs in the present study. As we set the
binary integer variable xj,l,k to decide the location for material
storages, this problem formulation with many linear constraints is
easier to be solved in MIP than in GA. In the GA formulation, the
integer variables and linear constraints will not improve the indirect
search guided by probabilistic transition rules, and with more
Table 7
Optimization results of total material transportation and distribution costs.
Material
type

Storage
location
(oor, cell)

Material
demand
per oor

Horizontal
distance
to hoist

Cost from
ground to
storage
cell

Cost
from
storage
cell to
hoist

Vertical
distribution
cost

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Total cost

(3,1)
(4,5)
(1,5)
(3,5)
(1,1)
(2,5)
(2,1)
(4,1)
(5,1)
(5,5)
T

2000
1500
6000
1500
4000
3000
2500
1000
500
700

10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10

34,800
35,400
78,000
33,600
28,000
24,600
68,000
14,600
8,400
12,460
4,293,020a

400,000
337,500
900,000
345,000
400,000
300,000
575,000
140,000
75,000
112,000

30,480
21,420
106,400
22,860
69,600
48,840
40,700
14,280
6,700
9,380

a
Transportation cost include all transportation costs from ground to storage cells,
from storage cells to hoist, and the distribution costs from hoist to all other building
oors as calculated by the objective function in Eq. (11).

Letter to the Editor

661

Table 8
Distribution costs of materials depending on the optimized storage locations.
Demand
oor

Material type j
1

10

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Total

160
80
0
80
160
240
320
400
480
560
640
720
800
880
960
1040
1120
1200
1280
1360
1440
1520
1600
1680
1760
1840
1920
2000
2080
2160
30,480

180
120
60
0
60
120
180
240
300
360
420
480
540
600
660
720
780
840
900
960
1020
1080
1140
1200
1260
1320
1380
1440
1500
1560
21,420

0
240
480
720
960
1200
1440
1680
1920
2160
2400
2640
2880
5120
3360
3600
3840
4080
4320
4560
4800
5040
5280
5520
5760
6000
6240
6480
6720
6960
106,400

120
60
0
60
120
180
240
300
360
420
480
540
600
660
720
780
840
900
960
1020
1080
1140
1200
1260
1320
1380
1440
1500
1560
1620
22,860

0
160
320
480
640
800
960
1120
1280
1440
1600
1760
1920
2080
2240
2400
2560
2720
2880
3040
3200
3360
3520
3680
3840
4000
4160
4320
4480
4640
69,600

120
0
120
240
360
480
600
720
840
960
1080
1200
1320
1440
1560
1680
1800
1920
2040
2160
2280
2400
2520
2640
2760
2880
3000
3120
3240
3360
48,840

100
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
1200
1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000
2100
2200
2300
2400
2500
2600
2700
2800
40,700

120
80
40
0
40
80
120
160
200
240
280
320
360
400
440
480
520
560
600
640
680
720
760
800
840
880
920
960
1000
1040
14,280

80
60
40
20
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260
280
300
320
340
360
380
400
420
440
460
480
500
6700

112
84
56
28
0
28
56
84
112
140
168
196
224
252
280
308
336
364
392
420
448
476
504
532
560
588
616
644
672
700
9380

problem formulation by adding additional linear constraint sets to

consider more complex and realistic situations.

Table 9
Statistics from LINGO (MIP approach).
Results
Objective value
Objective bound
Total solver iterations
Time to nd this value
Stopped because
Optimization started at
Optimization nished at
Total optimization time

4,293,020
4,293,020
4892
00:00:08
Global optimal solution found.
PM 12:30:30
PM 12:30:38
00:00:08

constraints, more additional steps must be added to eliminate the

infeasible genes from evolution. This will greatly increase the
optimization time and limit the GA's implementation for the layout
problem expansion. On the contrary, the integer variable will lead to a
rather direct search in MIP, and the linear constraints will conne the
solution space, then a true optimal solution will be drawn in a
relatively short convergence process.
6. Conclusions
Layout design is a typical combinatorial optimization problem in the
eld of management science with a nite but large number of feasible
solutions. There exist many numerical solution methods for this kind of
problem. Stochastic solution algorithm such as GA, which is based on
probabilistic solution procedures like crossover and mutation, cannot
locate the true optimal solution point. The problem can also be
formulated as a binary-mixed-integer linear problem (BMILP) and can
be solved deterministically by standard branch-and-bound techniques
locating the true optimal solution point within manageable computational efforts. The experimental results in this paper indicate: with
binary variable and linear constraints, MIP will perform better than GA.
Furthermore, MIP approach preserves great exibility to expand the

Acknowledgement
The work described in this paper was fully supported by a General
Research Fund (GRF) from the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong
(Project no. 9041157).
Appendix A. Pseudo Code illustrating the solution process in
LINGO for solving the present Mixed-Integer Programming
The present mixed-integer programming is coded using a commercial package called LINGO [36]. To help understand the programming
work, a set of pseudo code is presented illustrating how the decision
variables are dened and the problem is programmed.
//Set links between materials and storage cells with only one
material storing inside one cell.
For l = 1 to L {total number of storage levels}
For k = 1 to K {total number of cells}
For j = 1 to J {total number of material types}
If material type j is assigned to cell i, then
x[j][k][l] = 1
Else
x[j][k][l] = 0
to maintain
x[j][k][l] b = 1 //each location can be
assigned to storage at most one material type
Next j
Next k
Next l

662

Letter to the Editor

For j = 1 to J {total number of material types}

For l = 1 to L {total number of storage level}
For k = 1 to K {total number of cell}
If cell i on level l is assigned to material j
x[j][k][l] = 1
Else
x[j][k][l] = 0
to maintain
x[j][k][l] = 1 //such that each item must be
assigned to one cell
Next k
Next l
Next j
//Set links between destination oors m with requiring materials j
For j = 1 to J {total number of material types}
For m = 1 to M {total number of oor}
If material j is required on oor m
[m][j] = 1
N2 [j][m] N Q[j][m]
N Q[j][m][j][m]
Else
[m][j] = 0
Next m
Next j
//Set links among materials j, storage cell i and destination oors m
For l = 1 to L {total number of storage level}
For k = 1 to K {total number of cell}
For j = 1 to J {total number of material types}
For m = 1 to M {total number of oors}
If x[j][k][l] = 1 and [m][j] = 1
[j][k][l][m] = 1
Else
[j][k][l][m] = 0
Next m
Next j
Next k
Next l
//Record and compare the different assignments cost C[j][k][l][m]
to sort out the minimum associated cost x[j][k][l]as the optimal
solution
For l = 1 to L {total number of storage level}
For k = 1 to K {total number of cell}
For j = 1 to J {total number of material types}
For m =1 to M {total number of oors}
If [j][k][l][m] = 1 and C[j][k] [l] [m] b C[j +1][k][l][m]
Keep the assignment x[i][j]
Next m
Find min(C[j][k][l][m]) and the assignment x[j][k][l]
Next j
Next k
Next l
References
[1] I.W.H. Fung, C.K. Wong, C.M. Tam, T.K.L. Tong, Optimizing material hoiting
operations and storage cells in single multi-storey tower block construction by
genetic algorithm, The International Journal of Construction Management 2008
(2008) 6576.

[2] C.M. Tam, K.L.T. Tong, K.W.W. Chan, Genetic algorithm for optimizing supply
locations around tower crane, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 127 (4) (2001) 315321.
[3] H.S. Jang, S. Lee, S. Choi, Optimization of oor-level construction material layout
using genetic algorithms, Automation in Construction 16 (4) (2007) 531545.
[4] S.R. Sanders, H.R. Thomas, G.R. Smith, An Analysis of Factors Affecting Labor
Productivity in Masonry Construction. PTI # 9003, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA, 1989.
[5] L.Z. Xia, M. Anson, L.G. Ming, A procedure for quantitatively evaluating site layout
alternatives, Construction Management and Economics 19 (2001) 459467.
[6] L. Richard, L.E.M. Francis Jr., A.W. John, Facility Layout and Location: An Analytical
Approach, 2nd edPrentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1992.
[7] E. Cela, The quadratic assignment problem: theory and algorithms, Kluwer, 1998.
[8] B.K. Kaku, G.L. Thompson, I. Bayers, A heuristic method for the multi-story layout
problem, European Journal of Operational Research 37 (1988) 384397.
[9] T.C. Koopmans, M. Beckman, Assignment problems and the location of economic
activities, Econometrica 25 (1957) 5376.
[10] T. Stutzle, Iterated local search for the quadratic assignment problem, European
Journal of Operational Research 174 (3) (2006) 15191539.
[11] R.V. Johnson, SPACECRAFT for multi-oor layout planning, Management Science
28 (4) (1982) 407417.
[12] Y.A. Bozer, R.D. Meller, S.J. Erlebacher, An improvement-type layout algorithm for
single and multiple oor facilities, Management Science 40 (7) (1994) 918932.
[13] C.E. Donaghey, V.F. Pire, Solving the facility layout problem with BLOCPLAN,
Industrial Engineering Department, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 1990.
[14] R.D. Meller, Y.A. Bozer, A new simulated annealing algorithm for the facility layout
problem, International Journal of Production Research 34 (6) (1996) 16751692.
[15] R.D. Meller, Y.A. Bozer, Alternative approaches to solve the multi-oor facility
layout problem, Journal of Manufacturing Systems 16 (3) (1997) 192203.
[16] R.D. Meller, K.Y. Gau, The facility layout problem: recent and emerging trends and
perspectives, Journal of Manufacturing Systems 15 (5) (1996) 351366.
[17] C.-G. Lee, Z. Ma, The Generalized Quadratic Assignment Problem, Research Report,
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G8, Canada, 2004.
[18] P.M. Hahn, B.-J. Kim, W.L. Hightower, T. Stutzle, S. Kanthak, H. Samra, Z. Ding, M.
Guignard, The quadratic three-dimensional assignment problem: exact and
heuristic solution methods, European Journal of Operational Research 184 (2)
(2008) 416428.
[19] P.M. Hahn, J.M Smith, Y.R. Zhu, The multi-story space assignment problem, Annals
of Operations Research (2008) available online.
[20] Z. Drezner, P.M. Hahn, E. Taillard, Recent advances for the quadratic assignment
problem with special emphasis on instances that are difcult for meta-heuristic
methods, Annals of Operations Research 139 (2005) 6594.
[21] E.L. Lawler, The quadratic assignment problem, Management Science 9 (1963)
586599.
[22] B. Montreuil, A modelling framework for integrating layout design and ow
network design, Proceedings of the Material Handling Research Colloquium,
1990, pp. 4358, (Hebron, KY).
[23] S.M. Easa, K.M.A. Hossain, New mathematical optimization model for construction
site layout, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 134 (8) (2008)
653662.
[24] M. Goetschalckx, T. Irohara, Efcient formulations for the multi-oor facility
layout problem with elevators, Optimization Online (2007).
[25] M.L Eliane, M.M.d.A Nair, O.B.-N. Paulo, P. Hahn, Q. Tania, A survey for the
quadratic assignment problem, European Journal of Operational Research 176
(2007) 657690.
[26] C.K. Wong, I.W.H. Fung, C. Huang, S.C. Wong, The determination of facility location
by optimizing transportation cost within a construction site, Proceedings of the
13th International Conference of the Hong-Kong-Society-for-TransportationStudies, DEC 13-15, 2008 Hong Kong, Transportation and Management Science,
2008, pp. 865873.
[27] D.E. Goldberg, Genetic algorithms in search, optimization and machine leaning,
Morgan Kaufmann, 1989.
[28] M. Adel El-Baz, A genetic algorithm for facility layout problems of different
manufacturing environments, Computers & Industrial Engineering 47 (2) (2004)
233246.
[29] F. Azadivar, J. Wang, Facility layout optimization using simulation and genetic
algorithms, International Journal of Production Research 38 (17) (2000)
43694383.
[30] K. Matsuzaki, T. Irohara, K. Yoshimoto, Heuristic algorithm to solve the multi-oor
layout problem with the consideration of elevator utilization, Computers &
Industrial Engineering 36 (1999) 487502.
[31] K.W. Chau, Two-stage dynamic model on allocation of construction facilities with
genetic algorithm, Automation in Construction 13 (4) (2004) 481490.
[32] H. Li, Genetic search for solving construction site-level unequal-area facility
layout problems, Automation in Construction 9 (2) (2000) 217226.
[33] S.C. Wong, C.K. Wong, C.O. Tong, A parallelized genetic algorithm for the
calibration of Lowry model, Parallel Computing 27 (12) (2001) 15271536.
[34] P.P. Zouein, H. Harmanani, A. Hajar, Genetic algorithm for solving site layout
problem with unequal-size and constrained facilities, Journal of Computing in
Civil Engineering 16 (2) (2002) 143151.
[35] H. Zhang, J.Y. Wang, Particle swarm optimization for construction site unequalarea layout, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management-ASCE 134 (9)
(2008) 739748.
[36] S. Linus, Optimization modeling with LINGO, http://www.lindo.com/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=38&Itemid=241999.

Letter to the Editor

C. Huang
C.K. Wong
C.M. Tam
Department of Building and Construction, City University of Hong Kong,
Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 3442 6508; fax: +852 2788 7612.
E-mail address: wongck@cityu.edu.hk (C.K. Wong).
23 September 2009

663