Solving a capacitated p-median location allocation problem using genetic algorithm: a case study

Abstract

Facility location-allocation problems have various applications in private and public sectors. A capacitated p-median problem is considered in this work which is computationally NPHard. The primary goal of this paper was to determine a set of p-facilities location in which all demand points are allocated and its average distance traveled from the customers' location to the selected p-facilities is minimized. In addition, the model also considered supplier's allocation for p facilities. A real world case study has been addressed, and genetic algorithm which consists of crossover and mutation operators was proposed in order to solve the problem. Computational results for different values of p were generated, and finally the optimum solution based on minimum cost was reported.