A New Formulation Approach for Location-Routing Problems

A Location-Routing Problem (LRP) combines two difficult problems, facility location and vehicle routing, and as such it is inherently hard to solve. In this paper, we propose a different formulation approach than the common arc-based product-flow (Arc-BPF) approach in the literature. We associate pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Networks and spatial economics 2012-12, Vol.12 (4), p.635-659
Main Authors: Toyoglu, Hunkar, Karasan, Oya Ekin, Kara, Bahar Yetis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ammunition
Civil Engineering
Computation
Economics
Economics and Finance
Heuristic
Integer programming
Inventory
Linear programming
Location analysis
Logistics
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical models
Networks
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Position (location)
Problem solving
Regional/Spatial Science
Routing
Routing (telecommunications)
Strategic management
Studies
Vehicles
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Summary:A Location-Routing Problem (LRP) combines two difficult problems, facility location and vehicle routing, and as such it is inherently hard to solve. In this paper, we propose a different formulation approach than the common arc-based product-flow (Arc-BPF) approach in the literature. We associate product amounts to the nodes of the network resulting in a node-based product-flow (Node-BPF) formulation. Our main objective is to develop LRP models with fewer constraints and variables, which can be solved more efficiently. To introduce the proposed approach, we reformulate a complex four-index Arc-BPF LRP model from the literature as a three-index Node-BPF model, which computationally outperforms the former. We then introduce a heuristic method.
ISSN:1566-113X
1572-9427
DOI:10.1007/s11067-011-9170-y