Branch and bound algorithms for solving the multi-commodity capacitated multi-facility Weber problem

Abstract

The Multi-commodity Capacitated Multi-facility Weber Problem is concerned with locating I capacitated facilities in the plane in order to satisfy the demands of J customers for K commodities such that the total transportation cost is minimized. This is a multi-commodity extension of the well-known Capacitated Multi-facility Weber Problem and difficult to solve. In this work, we propose two branch-and-bound algorithms for exactly solving this nonconvex optimization problem. One of them considers partitioning of the allocation space while the other one considers partitioning of the location space. We have implemented two lower bounding schemes for both algorithms and tested several branching strategies. The results of an extensive computational study are also included.