| Article ID: | iaor198869 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 15 |
| Start Page Number: | 521 |
| End Page Number: | 533 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 1988 |
| Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
| Authors: | Fleischmann Bernhard, Paraschis Jannis N. |
| Keywords: | networks, heuristics |
The paper deals with the problem of defining the territories for 168 sales agents of a German manufacturer of consumer goods. About 1400 postal areas constitute the basic geographical units. The problem is solved by means of a location-allocation approach involving a standard code of a primal network algorithm as well as a new heuristic for resolving split areas. Numerical results and the implementation of the procedure as a planning tool are presented.