We present a new implementation of a widely used swap-based local search procedure for the P-median problem, proposed in 1968 by Teitz and Bart. Our method produces the same output as the best alternatives described in the literature and, even though its worst-case complexity is similar, it can be significantly faster in practice: speedups of up to three orders of magnitude were observed. We also show that our method can be easily adapted to handle the facility location problem and to implement related procedures, such as path-relinking and tabu search.
Citation
AT&T Labs Research Technical Report TD-5E4QKA, AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, NJ 07932 USA, September 2002. Revised December 2004.