Sigma Journal of Engineering and Natural Sciences, vol.1, pp.1-22, 2023 (ESCI)
In
facility layout problems, ergonomic issues are generally not considered in the
first place; instead, traditional layout aspects are taken into account.
However, with the developing technology, legal responsibilities, and awareness
of both the public and private sector to ergonomic issues, ergonomic concerns
in designing any production area are getting more attention. The aim of this
paper is to find an optimal single row facility layout arrangement taking into
account both ergonomic and traditional layout aspects. The considered ergonomic
feature is the noise exposure. If one worker exposure continuous high level of
noise, temporary or permanent hearing loss may occur, which is not desired in
the working life. To show the effect of
noise exposure on layout, a mathematical model with noise constraint was
developed. Moreover, a goal programming model which takes noise exposure,
closeness rates and material flow aspects as objectives was proposed. Traditional Analytical Hierarchy Process was
utilized to gain the weights of the objectives. The applicability of the model
was demonstrated by the solution of a hypothetical problem. The proposed models
were tested and validated on different conditions to find out the effect of
noise exposure.