A mixed integer programming formulation for solving operating theatre layout problem: A multi-goal approach

Facility Layout Problem (FLP) has been widely used in industrial systems to manage the space and the facilities within the floor space. The layout has a great impact on the productivity and the efficiency of running an organization. In health care systems, FLP is applied to hospital layout in a way to improve the health process, but the Operating Theater layout has received less attention instead of its importance. Existing research dealing with the OT Layout were based on graph theoretic methods, which ignore the size, the orientation and the shape of rooms and just focused on the desirable adjacency objective. This paper proposes a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation for the Operating Theater Layout problem. The formulation uses a multi-goal approach to optimize two objectives: the first quantitative objective minimizes the interdepartmental traveling costs, whereas the second qualitative objective maximizes the closeness of the facilities. The presented model determines the position and orientation of each activity according to the OT international standards. The applicability of the model is demonstrated on four illustrative examples using commercial optimization software.