Genetic algorithm approach in solving minisum facility location problem with fixed line barrier

Abstract

Facility location problem is a field of study in Operational Research that required in considering locating a facility or a set of new facilities on the plane to serve a finite set of existing demand points. A facility location problem usually formulated as a minimization or maximization problem with an objective function involving distances between the facility and demand points. Generally, facility location problems can be classified into several problems. However in this study, minisum facility location problem involving fixed line barrier is considered since line barrier is the most applicable one in real life problem. This is because the line barrier such as rivers, highways, borders or mountain ranges are frequently encountered in practice or real problem. The main objective of this study is to concentrate on solving the minisum facility location problem with fixed line barrier using meta-heuristic approach namely as Genetic Algorithm (GA). The basic concepts of facility location with barrier as well as formulation of the problem are also had been discussed in this study. Subsequently, the developed genetic algorithm for solving the problem is proposed in this study. The procedure is coded using C++ programming and implemented on generated data of 50 fixed points.