Fuzzy C-Means Algorithm with Fixed Cluster Centers for Uncapacitated Facility Location Problems: Turkish Case Study

Abstract

In this study, a new algorithm to solve uncapacitated facility location problems is proposed. The algorithm is a special version of original fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm. In FCM algorithm, unlabeled data are clustered and the cluster centers are determined according to priori known stopping criterion iteratively. Unlike the original FCM, the proposed algorithm allows the unlabeled data are to be assigned with single iteration to related clusters centers, which are assumed to be fixed and known a priori like location of facilities according to their degrees of membership. First, the proposed algorithm is applied to various benchmark problems from literature and compared with integer programming. Second, the proposed algorithm is tested and compared with particle swarm optimization (PSO) and artificial bee colony optimization (ABC) algorithms based uncapacitated facility location method on alternative versions such as discrete, continuous, discrete with local search and continuous with local search in literature for a Turkish fertilizer producer’s real data. Numerical results obtained from real life application show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the PSO-based and ABC-based algorithms.