An exact algorithm for the capacitated facility location problems with single sourcing

• Published in: European journal of operational research Vol. 113; no. 3; pp. 544 - 559
• Main Authors: Holmberg, Kaj, Rönnqvist, Mikael, Yuan, Di
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 16.03.1999; Elsevier; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Series: European Journal of Operational Research
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Branch-and-bound; Exact sciences and technology; Facilities planning; Facility location; Flows in networks. Combinatorial problems; Heuristic; Integer programming; Lagrangian heuristics; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Operations research; Site selection; Studies; Integer programming; Facility location; Branch-and-bound; Lagrangian heuristics; Facility; Branch and bound method; Algorithm; Location problem; Heuristic method
• ISSN: 0377-2217; 1872-6860
• DOI: 10.1016/S0377-2217(98)00008-3

Facility location problems are often encountered in many areas such as distribution, transportation and telecommunication. We describe a new solution approach for the capacitated facility location problem in which each customer is served by a single facility. An important class of heuristic solution methods for these problems are Lagrangian heuristics which have been shown to produce high quality solutions and at the same time be quite robust. A primal heuristic, based on a repeated matching algorithm which essentially solves a series of matching problems until certain convergence criteria are satisfied, is incorporated into the Lagrangian heuristic. Finally, a branch-and-bound method, based on the Lagrangian heuristic is developed, and compared computationally to the commercial code CPLEX. The computational results indicate that the proposed method is very efficient.