Metaheuristic Approach Based on Neighbourhood Search for Solving P-Median Problem

Abstract

Now a day there is much more amplified curiosity in combinatorial optimization. The p-median problem which is a facility location problem, deals with discrete data and hence it is characterized as a combinatorial optimization problem. It is NP-Hard in nature that ascertains the specified number of locations as facilitators which serves the maximum locations. The p-median problem will be productive in several applications areas such as mounting marketing strategies in Management Sciences and recognition of server positions in computer networks. A new Metaheuristic approach with Neighbourhood Search (NS) technique has been proposed in the present paper which unveil all possible combinations with the elements in the neighbourhood of individual elements in the solution and recognizes the optimal solution i.e., which serves the maximum locations so that the sum of the total distance from the each element to the facilities is minimized. The proposed metaheuristic approach is an iterative one which contains two phases. Construction phase is the first phase that structure the initial solution and based on the initial solution the second phase explore for the optimal solution based on NS approach and then the probable solution space is computed to obtain the optimal solution.