Capacitated Continuous Facility Location Problem With Unknown Number of Facilities

Abstract

:This study is concerned with the long-term strategic decision of simultaneously determining the number and location of new facilities to minimize the total (fixed and variable) cost of interacting with a set of existing facilities. The problem has many practical applications, including locating bus stops for public transportation. A non-linear, mixed integer mathematical formulation, a brute-force algorithm, and four heuristics are developed for the problem. Experimental results show that the proposed Greedy Search Heuristic outperforms all other heuristics considered. The proposed solution methods provide engineering managers with new tools to solve this particular facility location problem.