Cover-based inequalities for the single-source capacitated facility location problem with customer preferences

The single-source capacitated facility location problem with customer preferences (SSCFLPCP) is known to be strongly NP-hard and computational tests imply that state-of-the-art solvers struggle with computing exact solutions. In this paper, we contribute two novel preprocessing methods, which reduce the size of the considered integer programming formulation, and introduce sets of valid inequalities, which decrease the … Read more

Data-Driven Reliable Facility Location Design

We study the reliable (uncapacitated) facility location (RFL) problem in a data-driven environment where historical observations of random demands and disruptions are available. Owing to the combinatorial optimization nature of the RFL problem and the mixed-binary randomness of parameters therein, the state-of-the-art RFL models applied to the data-driven setting either suggest overly conservative solutions, or … Read more

upgrading the network in discrete location problems with customers satisfaction

Generally speaking, in a discrete location problem the decision maker chooses a set of facilities among a finite set of possibilities and decides to which facility each customer will be allocated in order to minimize the allocation cost. However, it is natural to consider the more realistic situation in which customers have their own criterion … Read more

Cooperative locker locations games

More and more people are ordering products online, having their parcels delivered to their homes. This leads to more congestion, which negatively impacts the environment as well as public health and safety. To reduce these negative impacts, carriers can use parcel lockers to consolidate and serve their customers. The implementation of a locker network can, … Read more

Distributionally Robust Disaster Relief Planning under the Wasserstein Set

We study a two-stage natural disaster management problem modeled as a stochastic program, where the first stage consists of a facility location problem, deciding where to open facilities and pre-allocate resources such as medical and food kits, and the second stage is a fixed-charge transportation problem, routing resources to affected areas after observing a disaster. … Read more

Distributionally Robust Facility Location with Bimodal Random Demand

In this paper, we consider a decision-maker who wants to determine a subset of locations from a given set of candidate sites to open facilities and accordingly assign customer demand to these open facilities. Unlike classical facility location settings, we focus on a new setting where customer demand is bimodal, i.e., display, or belong to, … Read more

Approximate Submodularity and Its Implications in Discrete Optimization

Submodularity, a discrete analog of convexity, is a key property in discrete optimization that features in the construction of valid inequalities and analysis of the greedy algorithm. In this paper, we broaden the approximate submodularity literature, which so far has largely focused on variants of greedy algorithms and iterative approaches. We define metrics that quantify … Read more

Some heuristic methods for the p-median problem with maximum distance constraints. Application to a bi-objective problem.

In this work we study the p-median problem with maximum distance constraints (PMPDC) which is a variant of the classical p-median problem (PMP). First of all, we provide some different formulations for (PMPDC) because the heuristics procedures for the (PMPDC) with a formulation based on the approach that modifies the distance matrix that leads to … Read more

Evaluating on-demand warehousing via dynamic facility location models

On-demand warehousing platforms match companies with underutilized warehouse and distribution capabilities with customers who need extra space or distribution services. These new business models have unique advantages, in terms of reduced capacity and commitment granularity, but also have different cost structures compared to traditional ways of obtaining distribution capabilities. This research is the first quantitative … Read more

Anomalous Behaviour of Dual-Based Heuristics

Some popular heuristics for combinatorial optimisation start by constructing a feasible solution to a dual of the problem. We show that such dual-based heuristics can exhibit highly counter-intuitive behaviour. In particular, for some problem classes, solving the dual exactly invariably leads to much worse primal solutions than solving the dual with a simple greedy heuristic. … Read more