Article ID: | iaor1991862 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 18 |
Start Page Number: | 167 |
End Page Number: | 182 |
Publication Date: | Jan 1991 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Lee C.Y. |
Keywords: | programming: integer |
Consider a generalization of the multiproduct capacitated facility location problem in which each facility capacity has to be chosen from a given set of admissible levels. The objective is to select a set of facilities to open, along with their capacities, and to assign customer demands to them so as to minimize the total cost. In this model, in addition to a fixed cost for opening a facility, a fixed cost is incurred for each product that a facility is equipped to produce. Also, transportation costs are incurred for satisfying each customer’s requirement for a particular product at each chosen facility. Benders’ decomposition provides a natural partitioning of this model which defines a master problem for selecting a set of open facilities and equipment (or machines) and a subproblem in which the optimal assignment of demand to a specific facility is determined. A solution algorithm based on Bender’s decomposition is developed, implemented and applied to a numerical example to discuss the behavior of the cutting planes generated in Benders’ decomposition. Computational results of this algorithm are quite satisfactory and encouraging.