The congested facility location problem

Consider a network facility location problem where congestion arises at facilities, and is represented by delay functions that approximate the queueing process. This paper strives to minimize the sum of customers’ transportation and waiting times, and facilities’ fixed and variable costs. The problem is solved using a column generation technique within a branch-and-bound scheme. Numerical results are reported and a bilevel (user-optimized) formulation considered, among other extensions.