Abstract
In this paper, the uncapacitated facility location problem is considered. An improved heuristic for solving this problem is proposed. The algorithm is tested on some standard test problems taken from literature and its performance is compared with the known optimal solutions. Computational results show that the proposed algorithm produce optimal solutions in 25 out of 32 test problems, and it is very efficient in terms of time compared to existing algorithms in the literature. Its average percentage deviation from optimal is only 0.095%.
Significance: The facility location problem is one of the important problems faced by industry. It ranges from choosing a site for a plant to relocating a machine in a factory (e.g. relocating a lathe in a machine shop). This paper proposes an efficient heuristic to solve these kinds of problems.