Combined facility location and distribution network design problem: Progressive models and a case study

Abstract

This paper addresses to the facility location problem of ammunition stores considering the design of distribution network from stores to geographically dispersed army forces. The problem is to determine the construction sites of the ammunition stores among candidate sites and to give the decision on how many stores will be built from which kind. The problem also contains designing of a distribution network to concurrently determine the amounts of several military equipment transported from stores to army forces. A mathematical model is proposed to minimize the cost of the whole system, caused by the construction of the ammunition stores and the transportation of different equipment in diverse quantities from stores to dispersed army forces. The model is then improved progressively and several variants are presented to reflect the real-world conditions through a case study. Numerical results obtained from solving the case study using the proposed models coded in General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS) are exhibited. The effect of the size of problem specific parameters on the model execution time is also investigated via experimental tests. The results demonstrate the promising problem-solving capacity of the proposed models, which can be applied practically.