A greedy heuristic algorithm for solving the capacitated planar multi-facility location-allocation problem

• Published in: AIP conference proceedings Vol. 1782; no. 1
• Main Authors: Luis, Martino, Ramli, Mohammad Fadzli, Lin, Abdullah
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Melville American Institute of Physics 25.10.2016
• Subjects: Adaptive search techniques; Greedy algorithms; Heuristic methods; Production scheduling
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4966077

This study investigates the capacitated planar multi-facility location-allocation problem by considering various capacity constraints. The problem is also known as the capacitated multi-source Weber problem, where the number of facilities to be located is specified and each of which has a capacity constraint. An efficient greedy randomised adaptive search procedure (GRASP) is proposed to deal with the problem. A scheme that applies the furthest distance rule (FDR) and self-adjusted threshold parameters to generate initial facility locations that are situated sparsely within GRASP framework is also presented. The construction of the restricted candidate list (RCL) within GRASP is also guided by applying a concept of restricted regions that prevents new facility locations to be sited too close to the previous selected facility locations. The performance of the proposed GRASP heuristics is tested using benchmark data sets from literature. The computational experiments show that the proposed methods provide encouraging solutions when compared to recently published papers. Some future research avenues on the subject are also briefly highlighted.