Comparison of solution procedures to the facility location problem

This paper describes a mathematical model for determining optimum location for N facilities of the same size so as to maximize the sum of the material flow between the adjacent facilities. The model is based on a 0–1 integer program formulation of the problem which may produce an optimal, but infeasible solution, followed by a heuristic which begins with the 0–1 integer solution and generates a feasible solution. The procedure is capable of generating good solutions for medium-size problems. For location problems of size N = 4 to N = 16, the performance of the procedure in terms of the CPU time and the degree of closeness of the final solution to the optimal (yet infeasible) solution is measured and conclusions are drawn. The procedure is an addition to the existing pool of mathematical models for the facility layout problem.