An Application of Genetic Algorithm for Facility Location Problem with A-distance in a Competitive Environment

• Published in: Transactions of the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers Vol. 20; no. 3; pp. 106 - 113
• Main Authors: KATO, Kosuke, KATAGIRI, Hideki, UNO, Takeshi, SAKAWA, Masatoshi, CHO, Kazutaka
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: THE INSTITUTE OF SYSTEMS, CONTROL AND INFORMATION ENGINEERS (ISCIE) 15.03.2007
• Subjects: A-distance; competitiveness; facility location; genetic algorithm; linear programming
• ISSN: 1342-5668; 2185-811X
• DOI: 10.5687/iscie.20.106

About studies of optimal location problem with competitiveness to other facilities, the distance between facilities and their customers is usually represented as Euclid distance. However, there are often cases that facility location given for facility location model with Euclid distance does not suit the actual condition of facility location in city area. In this paper, we suggest a new location model by introducing A-distance, proposed by Widmayer etc., which is the distance that directions that customers can move is limited. Because the formulated optimal location problem is difficult to solve immediately, we reformulate the problem to combinational problem to find one of the optimal solutions for the problem. The reformulated problem can be solved strictly, but it requires enormous computational time and costs for large scale problems. We construct an efficient solving method by applying genetic algorithm for non-linear 0-1 programming problem. Moreover, we show efficiency of the algorithm by using some numerical examples.