The placement of facilities is a fundamental task in many industries, and the facility layout problem is frequently encountered. This paper describes the implementation of a modified genetic algorithm for solving the facility layout problem by minimizing the total material handling the cost. An isomer-based elitism is applied and the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with previous results in the literature. An extended method for measuring the efficiency of the algorithm is proposed. The results suggest that the efficiency of the proposed methodology is competitive with prior work and that isomer-based elitism should be reviewed for application in a wider range of problems.