Heuristic Methods Based on MINLP Formulation for Reliable Capacitated Facility Location Problems

This paper addresses a reliable facility location problem with considering facility capacity constraints. In reliable facility location problem some facilities may become unavailable from time to time. If a facility fails, its clients should refer to other facilities by paying the cost of retransfer to these facilities. Hence, the fail of facilities leads to disruptions in facility location decisions and this problem is an attempt to reducing the impact of these disruptions. In order to formulate the problem, a new mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model with the objective of minimizing total investment and operational costs is presented. Due to complexity of MINLP model, two different heuristic procedures based on mathematical model are developed. Finally, the performance of the proposed heuristic methods is evaluated through executive numerical example. The numerical results show that the proposed heuristic methods are efficient and provide suitable solutions.