DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO PLANT LAYOUT UNDER SEQUENTIAL MACHINERY INVESTMENT FOR NIGERIAN ENTREPRENEURS

Abstract

Establishment of small/medium scale industries by Nigerian entrepreneurs has majorly been hindered by huge investment cost to execute plant projects at a swell swoop. This study employs dynamic programming approach to populate a pre-planned plant layout using sequential machinery investment techniques. Such sequential investment involves the purchase of the most important machinery in order of priorities according to combined decision rules, to construct most needed factory and office space in modular forms and also to provide sufficient working capital to keep the plant working optimally at every stage. Total earnings obtained from previous periods are subsequently re-invested each period till all the planned machines in the plant layout are all fully purchased, installed and commissioned. The model also determines priorities using suitable decision rules to construct needed factory and office space and to also provide sufficient working capital to keep the plant working optimally at every stage. The model developed was solved using heuristics which employs important decision rules and this was implemented through a software called DYNAPLANT developed using C Sharp programming language to facilitate the solution procedure