A Continuum Approximation Approach to the Dynamic Facility Location Problem

This paper proposes a continuum approximation model framework to solve a dynamic facility location problem for a large-scale growing market. The problem determines the optimal set-up location and time of a set of facilities to minimize the cost of facility construction and customer service, while the location of each deployed facility must remain consistent over time. A continuous approximation model is first developed to find the optimal facility density in the spatio-temporal continuum. Then the authors propose a tube model that can be used to discretize a continuous facility density function (i.e., the output of the continuous optimization model) into a set of discrete facility set-up locations/times, while each built facility is still allowed to change location over time. Finally, location consistency is enforced via an iterative tube regulation procedure based on a penalty method. A numerical experiment is conducted to illustrate the performance (accuracy and convergence) of the proposed methodological framework. It is shown that the proposed method solves the dynamic facility location problem effectively.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB30(9) Paper Reveiw Group #5. Alternate title: Continuum Approximation Approach to Dynamic Facility Location Problem.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Transportation Research Board

    500 Fifth Street, NW
    Washington, DC  United States  20001
  • Authors:
    • Wang, Xin
    • Lim, Michael K
    • Ouyang, Yanfeng
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2014

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References;
  • Pagination: 14p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01514322
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0276
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Feb 12 2014 12:33PM