A Framework for Genetic Algorithm Application in Hospital Facility Layout Design

Hospitals are the most complex types of buildings in which a wide range of facilities and services are involved that make the design of facility layout more complex. There has been little research on facility layout design of hospitals. The objective of hospital facility layout design is to improve the functionality and save cost. The functionality criterion involves placing the closely related departments together and others apart. Cost saving is based on minimization of the total cost factors, such as travel cost, material movement cost and reduced travel time. This paper proposes a framework for making the hospital facility layout design for achieving these objectives. A Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based approach is adopted for generating layouts, and a cost evaluation model is applied for selecting the best layout strategy