Facility Location

This book deals with location problems. Location problems establish a set of facilities (resources) to minimize the cost of satisfying a set of demands (customers) with respect to a set of constraints. There are four components that describe location problems: customers, who are assumed to be already located at points or on routes, facilities that will be located, a space in which customers and facilities are located, and a metric that indicates geographical and chronological distances between customers and facilities. This book describes these parts in each specific location model. Location models are used in a variety of applications such as locating warehouses within a supply chain to minimize the average time to market, locating noxious material to maximize its distance to the public, etc. In this book, readers can find these applications exemplified by real-world cases for each particular model. The relationship between location problems and other areas such as supply chains isalso considered here.

Zusammenfassung
The mathematical science of facility locating has attracted much attention in d- crete and continuous optimization over nearly last four decades. Investigators have focused on both algorithms and formulations in diverse settings in both the private sectors (e.g., industrial plants, banks, retail facilities, etc.) and the public sectors (e.g., hospitals, post stations, etc.). Facility location problems locate a set of facilities (resources) to minimize the cost ofsatisfying someset ofdemands(ofthecustomers)with respectto some set of constraints. Facility location decisions are critical elements in strategic planning for awiderangeofprivateandpublic?rms.Thebranchesoflocatingfacilities arebroad and long-lasting, in?uencing numerous operational and logistical decisions. High costs associated with property acquisition and facility construction make facility location or relocation projects long-term investments. Decision makers must select sites that will not only perform well according to the current system state, but also willcontinuetobepro?tableforthefacilityslifetime,evenas environmentalfactors change,populationsshift,andmarkettrendsevolve.Findingrobustfacilitylocations is thus a dif?cult task, demanding decision makers to account for uncertain future events. Locationscience is an areaof analyticalstudythat can be tracedbackto Pierrede Fermat, Evagelistica Torricelli (a student of Galileo), and Battista Cavallieri. Each one independently proposed (and some say solved) the basic Euclidean spatial - dian problem early in the seventeenth century.

Inhalt
Distance Functions in Location Problems.- An Overview of Complexity Theory.- Single Facility Location Problem.- Multifacility Location Problem.- Location Allocation Problem.- Quadratic Assignment Problem.- Covering Problem.- Median Location Problem.- Center Problem.- Hierarchical Location Problem.- Hub Location Problem.- Competitive Location Problem.- Warehouse Location Problem.- Obnoxious Facility Location.- Dynamic Facility Location Problem.- Multi-Criteria Location Problem.- Location-Routing Problem.- Storage System Layout.- Location-Inventory Problem.- Facility Location in Supply Cha.- Classification of Location Models and Location Softwares.- Demand Point Aggregation Analaysis for Location Models.