A multi-objective logistics model for a capacitated service facility problem

There have been numerous extensions of the maximum covering location problem that has been developed in the last decade to deal with facility location. Most of the research, however, addresses a single attribute or objective. In the case when a single criterion such as minimizing average response time to a service facility is insufficient to address the interests of the decision maker, multiple objectives must be employed. Qualitative factors like customer service and market demand as well as quantitative factors like distribution and operating costs need to be appropriately weighted and used in a mathematical programming model. We develop a multi-objective model for a service facility location problem that simultaneously sites facilities and allocates demand for products from different customer zones. We apply this model to ‘real-world’ data and show the practical advantages of using this model to solve capacitated service logistics problems.