Multiobjective transportation considerations in multiple facility location

Transportation costs and customer responsiveness are both important considerations in locating production, distribution, marketing and service facilities. This report investigates the relation between total shipping distance (a surrogate for transportation costs), customer coverage within a given distance (a surrogate for customer responsiveness) and the number and locations within the U.S. of multiple facilities producing the same product. Results show that when a single objective is optmized alone, the penalty incurred with respect to the other objective can be substantial. However, it is often possible to find good ‘trade-off’ locations which are only slightly suboptimal with respect to each objective. Incremental strategies, for adding facilities to a set of already existing locations, are also discussed.