Competitive facility location and design problem

We develop a spatial interaction model that seeks to simultaneously optimize location and design decisions for a set of new facilities. The facilities compete for customer demand with pre-existing competitive facilities and with each other. The customer demand is assumed to be elastic, expanding as the utility of the service offered by the facilities increases. Increases in the utility can be achieved by increasing the number of facilities, design improvements, or locating facilities closer to the customer.     

Accelerating Benders' decomposition for the capacitated facility location problem

Discrete facility location problems are attractive candidates for decomposition procedures since two types of decisions have to be performed: on the one hand the yes/no-decision where to locate the facilities, on the other hand the decision how to allocate the demand to the selected facilities. Nevertheless, Benders' decomposition seems to have a rather slow convergence behaviour when applied for solving location problems. In the following, a procedure will be presented for strengthening the Benders' cuts for the capacitated facility location problem. Computational results show the efficiency of the modified Benders' decomposition algorithm. Furthermore, the paretooptimality of the strengthened Benders' cuts in the sense of [Magnanti and Wong 1990] is shown under a weak assumption.This paper was written when the author was at the Institute for Operations Research, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and partly supported by Schweizerischer Nationalfond zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Grant 12-30140.90).     

A branch-and-price algorithm for the capacitated facility location problem

The capacitated facility location problem (CFLP) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem with applications in distribution and production planning. It consists in selecting plant sites from a finite set of potential sites and in allocating customer demands in such a way as to minimize operating and transportation costs. A number of solution approaches based on Lagrangean relaxation and subgradient optimization has been proposed for this problem. Subgradient optimization does not provide a primal (fractional) optimal solution to the corresponding master problem. However, in order to compute optimal solutions to large or difficult problem instances by means of a branch-and-bound procedure information about such a primal fractional solution can be advantageous. In this paper, a (stabilized) column generation method is, therefore, employed in order to solve a corresponding master problem exactly. The column generation procedure is then employed within a branch-and-price algorithm for computing optimal solutions to the CFLP. Computational results are reported for a set of larger and difficult problem instances.     

Approximating the two-level facility location problem via a quasi-greedy approach

We propose a quasi-greedy algorithm for approximating the classical uncapacitated 2-level facility location problem (2-LFLP). Our algorithm, unlike the standard greedy algorithm, selects a sub-optimal candidate at each step. It also relates the minimization 2-LFLP problem, in an interesting way, to the maximization version of the single level facility location problem. Another feature of our algorithm is that it combines the technique of randomized rounding with that of dual fitting. This new approach enables us to approximate the metric 2-LFLP in polynomial time with a ratio of 1.77, a significant improvement on the previously known approximation ratios. Moreover, our approach results in a local improvement procedure for the 2-LFLP, which is useful in improving the approximation guarantees for several other multi-level facility location problems. An additional result of our approach is an O(ln (n))-approximation algorithm for the non-metric 2-LFLP, where n is the number of clients. This is the first non-trivial approximation for a non-metric multi-level facility location problem. An extended abstract of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 15th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), January 2004.     

A single facility stochastic location problem undera-distance

In this paper we consider a stochastic facility location model in which the weights of demand points are not deterministic but independent random variables, and the distance between the facility and each demand point isA-distance. Our objective is to find a solution which minimizes the total cost criterion subject to a chance constraint on cost restriction. We show a solution method which solves the problem in polynomial order computational time. Finally the case of rectilinear distance, which is used in many facility location models, is discussed.     

Competitive facility location problem with attractiveness adjustment of the follower: A bilevel programming model and its solution

We are concerned with a problem in which a firm or franchise enters a market by locating new facilities where there are existing facilities belonging to a competitor. The firm aims at finding the location and attractiveness of each facility to be opened so as to maximize its profit. The competitor, on the other hand, can react by adjusting the attractiveness of its existing facilities with the objective of maximizing its own profit. The demand is assumed to be aggregated at certain points in the plane and the facilities of the firm can be located at predetermined candidate sites. We employ Huff’s gravity-based rule in modeling the behavior of the customers where the fraction of customers at a demand point that visit a certain facility is proportional to the facility attractiveness and inversely proportional to the distance between the facility site and demand point. We formulate a bilevel mixed-integer nonlinear programming model where the firm entering the market is the leader and the competitor is the follower. In order to find the optimal solution of this model, we convert it into an equivalent one-level mixed-integer nonlinear program so that it can be solved by global optimization methods. Apart from reporting computational results obtained on a set of randomly generated instances, we also compute the benefit the leader firm derives from anticipating the competitor’s reaction of adjusting the attractiveness levels of its facilities. The results on the test instances indicate that the benefit is 58.33% on the average.     

On an open problem in spherical facility location

In this paper we partially resolve an open problem in spherical facility location. The spherical facility location problem is a generalization of the planar Euclidean facility location problem. This problem was first studied by Katz and Cooper and by Drezner and Wesolowsky where a Weszfeld-like algorithm was proposed. This algorithm is very simple and does not require a line search. However, its convergence has been an open problem for more than ten years. In this paper, we prove that the sequence generated by the algorithm converges to the unique optimal solution under the condition that the oscillation of the sequence converges to zero. We conjecture that the algorithm is a descent algorithm and prove that the sequence generated by the algorithm converges to the optimal solution under this conjecture.     

LP-based approximation for uniform capacitated facility location problem

In this paper, we study uniform hard capacitated facility location problem. The standard LP for the problem is known to have an unbounded integrality gap. We present constant factor approximation by rounding a solution to the standard LP with a slight $(1+ϵ)$ violation in the capacities.Our result shows that the standard LP is not too bad.Our algorithm is simple and more efficient as compared to the strengthened LP-based true approximation that uses the inefficient ellipsoid method with a separation oracle. True approximations are also known for the problem using local search techniques that suffer from the problem of convergence. Moreover, solutions based on standard LP are easier to integrate with other LP-based algorithms.The result is also extended to give the first approximation for uniform hard capacitated $k$-facility location problem violating the capacities by a factor of $(1+ϵ)$ and breaking the barrier of 2 in capacity violation. The result violates the cardinality by a factor of $\frac{2}{1+ϵ}$.     

一类多商品设施选址问题的基于线性松弛解的启发式方法

多商品设施选址问题是众多设施选址问题中一类重要而困难的问题.在这一问题中,顾客的需求可能包含不止一种商品.对于大规模问题,成熟的商业求解器往往不能在满意的时间内找到高质量的可行解.研究了无容量限制的单货源多商品设施选址问题的一般形式,并给出了应用于此类问题的两个启发式方法.这两个方法基于原选址问题的线性规划松弛问题的最优解,分别通过求解紧问题和邻域搜索的方式给出了原问题的一个可行上界.理论分析指出所提方法可以实施于任意可行问题的实例.数值结果表明所提方法可以显著地提高求解器求解此类设施选址问题的求解效率.     

Fault-tolerant concave facility location problem with uniform requirements

In this paper, we consider the fault-tolerant concave facility location problem (FTCFL) with uni- form requirements. By investigating the structure of the FTCFL, we obtain a modified dual-fitting bifactor approximation algorithm. Combining the scaling and greedy argumentation technique, the approximation fac- tor is proved to be 1.52.     

Approximation algorithms for the stochastic priority facility location problem

In this article, we present a primal-dual 3-approximation algorithm for the stochastic priority facility location problem. Combined with greedy augmentation procedure, such performance factor is further improved to 1.8526.     

Approximating connected facility location with buy-at-bulk edge costs via random sampling

In the connected facility location problem with buy-at-bulk edge costs we are given a set of clients with positive demands and a set of potential facilities with opening costs in an undirected graph with edge lengths obeying the triangle inequality. Moreover, we are given a set of access cable types, each with a cost per unit length and a capacity such that the cost per capacity decreases from small to large cables, and a core cable type of infinite capacity. The task is to open some facilities and to connect them by a Steiner tree using core cables, and to build a forest network using access cables such that the edge capacities suffice to simultaneously route all client demands unsplit to the open facilities. The objective is to minimize the total cost of opening facilities, building the core Steiner tree, and installing the access cables. In this paper, we devise a constant-factor approximation algorithm for this problem based on a random sampling technique.     

On the convergence of a modified algorithm for the spherical facility location problem

We study the spherical facility location problem which is a more realistic model than the Euclidean facilities location. We present a modified algorithm for this problem, which has the following good properties: (a) It is very easy to initialize the algorithm with an arbitrary point as its starting point; (b) Under suitable assumptions, it is proved that the algorithm globally converges to a global minimizer of the problem.     

带有异常点的平方度量设施选址问题

传统的设施选址问题一般假设所有顾客都被服务,考虑到异常点的存在不仅会增加总费用(设施的开设费用与连接费用之和),也会影响到对其他顾客的服务质量.研究异常点在最终方案中允许不被服务的情况,称之为带有异常点的平方度量设施选址问题.该问题是无容量设施选址问题的推广.问题可描述如下:给定设施集合、顾客集,以及设施开设费用和顾客...     

A cutting plane algorithm for the capacitated facility location problem

The Capacitated Facility Location Problem (CFLP) is to locate a set of facilities with capacity constraints, to satisfy at the minimum cost the order-demands of a set of clients. A multi-source version of the problem is considered in which each client can be served by more than one facility. In this paper we present a reformulation of the CFLP based on Mixed Dicut Inequalities, a family of minimum knapsack inequalities of a mixed type, containing both binary and continuous (flow) variables. By aggregating flow variables, any Mixed Dicut Inequality turns into a binary minimum knapsack inequality with a single continuous variable. We will refer to the convex hull of the feasible solutions of this minimum knapsack problem as the Mixed Dicut polytope. We observe that the Mixed Dicut polytope is a rich source of valid inequalities for the CFLP: basic families of valid CFLP inequalities, like Variable Upper Bounds, Cover, Flow Cover and Effective Capacity Inequalities, are valid for the Mixed Dicut polytope. Furthermore we observe that new families of valid inequalities for the CFLP can be derived by the lifting procedures studied for the minimum knapsack problem with a single continuous variable. To deal with large-scale instances, we have developed a Branch-and-Cut-and-Price algorithm, where the separation algorithm consists of the complete enumeration of the facets of the Mixed Dicut polytope for a set of candidate Mixed Dicut Inequalities. We observe that our procedure returns inequalities that dominate most of the known classes of inequalities presented in the literature. We report on computational experience with instances up to 1000 facilities and 1000 clients to validate the approach.     

Lower bounds for the two-stage uncapacitated facility location problem

In the two-stage uncapacitated facility location problem, a set of customers is served from a set of depots which receives the product from a set of plants. If a plant or depot serves a product, a fixed cost must be paid, and there are different transportation costs between plants and depots, and depots and customers. The objective is to locate plants and depots, given both sets of potential locations, such that each customer is served and the total cost is as minimal as possible. In this paper, we present a mixed integer formulation based on twice-indexed transportation variables, and perform an analysis of several Lagrangian relaxations which are obtained from it, trying to determine good lower bounds on its optimal value. Computational results are also presented which support the theoretical potential of one of the relaxations.     

平方度量动态设施选址问题的近似算法

研究了单阶段度量设施选址问题的推广问题平方度量动态设施选址问题. 研究中首先利用原始对偶技巧得到 9-近似算法, 然后利用贪婪增广技巧将近似比改进到2.606, 最后讨论了该问题的相应变形问题.     

A bi-objective modeling approach applied to an urban semi-desirable facility location problem

This paper introduces a mixed-integer, bi-objective programming approach to identify the locations and capacities of semi-desirable (or semi-obnoxious) facilities. The first objective minimizes the total investment cost; the second one minimizes the dissatisfaction by incorporating together in the same function “pull” and “push” characteristics of the decision problem (individuals do not want to live too close, but they do not want to be too far, from facilities). The model determines the number of facilities to be opened, the respective capacities, their locations, their respective shares of the total demand, and the population that is assigned to each candidate site opened. The proposed approach was tested with a case study for a particular urban planning problem: the location of sorted waste containers. The complete set of (supported or unsupported) non-inferior solutions, consisting of combinations of multi-compartment containers for the disposal of four types of sorted waste in nineteen candidate sites, and population assignments, was generated. The results obtained for part of the historical center of an old European city (Coimbra, Portugal) show that this approach can be applied to a real-world planning scenario.     

Exploring the constrained maximum edge-weight connected graph problem

Given an edge weighted graph, the maximum edge-weight connected graph （MECG） is a connected subgraph with a given number of edges and the maximal weight sum. Here we study a special case, i.e. the Constrained Maximum Edge-Weight Connected Graph problem （CMECG）, which is an MECG whose candidate subgraphs must include a given set of k edges, then also called the k-CMECG. We formulate the k-CMECG into an integer linear programming model based on the network flow problem. The k-CMECG is proved to be NP-hard. For the special case 1-CMECG, we propose an exact algorithm and a heuristic algorithm respectively. We also propose a heuristic algorithm for the k-CMECG problem. Some simulations have been done to analyze the quality of these algorithms. Moreover, we show that the algorithm for 1-CMECG problem can lead to the solution of the general MECG problem.     

An approximation algorithm for the dynamic facility location problem with submodular penalties

In this paper, we study the dynamic facility location problem with submodular penalties （DFLPSP）. We present a combinatorial primal-dual 3-approximation algorithm for the DFLPSP.