Ant Colony System for a Fuzzy Adjacent Multiple-Level Warehouse Layout Problem

A warehouse layout problem where the warehouse has more than one level and both the distance from the cell to the receive/exit bay and demand of item types are fuzzy variables is proposed. The problem is to find a layout with the minimum transportation cost subject to adjacency and other constraints. A fuzzy expected value model is given and an ant colony system is designed to solve the problem. Computational results indicate the efficiency and effectiveness of the method.