An iterated tabu search heuristic for the Single Source Capacitated Facility Location Problem

Abstract

This paper discusses the Single Source Capacitated Facility Location Problem (SSCFLP) where the problem consists in determining a subset of capacitated facilities to be opened in order to satisfy the customers’ demands such that total costs are minimized. The paper presents an iterated tabu search heuristic to solve the SSCFLP. The iterated tabu search heuristic combines tabu search with perturbation operators to avoid getting stuck in local optima. Experimental results show that this simple heuristic is capable of generating high quality solutions using small computing times. Moreover, it is also competitive with other metaheuristic approaches for solving the SSCFLP.