Dual-Ascent Procedures for Multicommodity Location-Allocation Problems with Balancing Requirements

The multicommodity location-allocation problem with balancing requirements is related to one of the major logistics issues faced by distribution and transportation firms: the management of the fleet of vehicles over a medium to long-term planning horizon. We present a dual-ascent approach for this f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation science 1993-05, Vol.27 (2), p.90-101
Main Authors: Crainic, Teodor Gabriel, Delorme, Louis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Exact sciences and technology
Fixed costs
Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction
Heuristics
Marketing strategies
Minimization of cost
Objective functions
Operating costs
Optimal solutions
Transportation
Transportation costs
Variable costs
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Summary:The multicommodity location-allocation problem with balancing requirements is related to one of the major logistics issues faced by distribution and transportation firms: the management of the fleet of vehicles over a medium to long-term planning horizon. We present a dual-ascent approach for this formulation which may be used either to obtain a good heuristic solution, or to compare sharp bounds in a branch-and-bound scheme. We present and compare two variants of this approach, and analyze their performances both on a large number of randomly generated problems and on a large-scale application to the strategic/tactical planning of the land operations of an international maritime container shipping firm. Our results demonstrate that a dual-ascent approach is highly effective in this context.
ISSN:0041-1655
1526-5447
DOI:10.1287/trsc.27.2.90