The OA-based swap method for the P-median problem

The location problems are important problems in the business world and have been widely studied. The p-median problem is one of the location problems. In this study, we propose an orthogonal array based swap method to solve the p-median problem. A local search method called the OA-interchange is designed. It utilizes the OA array and the Taguchi method to generate a set of solutions, and among this set of solutions, it finds the best one. The proposed OA-based swap method consists of iterative applications of the OA-interchange. Moreover, the proposed method has a scheme to control the strength of diversification and the strength of intensification. Testing of the OA-based swap method on the OR-Library and the fl1400 benchmarks reveals that the proposed method is competitive with other state-of-the-art methods reported in the literature.