Efficient approximate solution methods for the multi-commodity capacitated multi-facility Weber problem


AKYÜZ M. H., ÖNCAN T., ALTINEL İ. K.

COMPUTERS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH, vol.39, no.2, pp.225-237, 2012 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 39 Issue: 2
  • Publication Date: 2012
  • Doi Number: 10.1016/j.cor.2011.03.015
  • Journal Name: COMPUTERS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.225-237
  • Galatasaray University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

The capacitated multi-facility Weber problem is concerned with locating 1 capacitated facilities in the plane to satisfy the demand of J customers with the minimum total transportation cost of a single commodity. This is a nonconvex optimization problem and difficult to solve. In this work, we focus on a multi-commodity extension and consider the situation where K distinct commodities are shipped subject to capacity constraints between each customer and facility pair. Customer locations, demands and capacities for each commodity, and bundle restrictions are known a priori. The transportation costs, which are proportional to the distance between customers and facilities, depend on the commodity type. We address several location-allocation and discrete approximation heuristics using different strategies. Based on the obtained computational results we can say that the alternate solution of location and allocation problems is a very efficient strategy; but the discrete approximation has excellent accuracy. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.