The continuous single-source capacitated multi-facility Weber problem with setup costs: formulation and solution methods

The continuous single-source capacitated multi-facility Weber problem (SSCMFWP) where setup cost of opening facilities is taken into account is investigated. The aim is to locate a set of facilities on the plane, to define their respective capacities which can be linked to the configuration of the processing machines used, and to allocate customers to exactly one facility with the objective being the minimisation of the total transportation and setup costs. A new nonlinear mathematical model based on the SSCMFWP is introduced where Rectilinear and Euclidean distances are used. Efficient metaheuristic approaches based on Variable Neighbourhood Search and Simulated Annealing are also developed. The proposed metaheuristics incorporate an exact method and the commonly used Cooper’s alternate location-allocation method. We also constructed a new data set to reflect the characteristic of this particular location problem as no data set is available in the literature. Computational experiments show that the proposed metaheuristics generate interesting results for this class of continuous location problems.