Abstract


         The competitive environment where business organizations presently develop obligates them to operate under high quality requirements and minimum production costs. Production costs are influenced considerably by the distribution of different plant activities and their equipment maintenance costs. In the design of distribution of activities, consideration of ordering to favor the optimum route for production material and minimizing cost associated with displacement is imperative. This distribution  should also pay attention to other introduction criteria. In reference to maintenance, implementing actions that permit the conservation of completely operative equipment, through procedures that minimize process interruptions and their associated costs is crucial. Up to now, methodologies have not been proposed that contemplate together both considerations in plant design. In this work, a first model is proposed, whose goal is to minimize costs related to the positioning of activities and their distribution, as well as those expected in the application of equipment maintenance. A genetic algorithm was used as a search and validation methodology.


















Key Words: distribution in plants, maintenance, combinatorial optimization, genetic algorithm.

Abstract.