An Operational Research Approach to Allocation of Clients to a Certain Class of Service Institutions

A model is developed to explain the allocation of clients to different locations of a certain class of service institutions. It can be used for all types of allocation-problems which have the features: clients are travelling from their home locations to the service places. They can choose among several locations of the institution all of which offer the same services. The clients need constant travelling times or costs, and they cause different waiting times or costs at each location, which are a function of the number of clients choosing that service station. The objective of the individual client is to minimize the total time or cost required.Since exact alogrithms cannot be used because of the large number of variables and the non-linearity of the problem, a special approximation algorithm is developed.The paper presents the results of a study concerning the allocation of cars, which must periodically be checked for traffic safety at official test stations.