Exact solution approaches for the nested p-center problem

Description

Consistent solutions are vital in multi-period facility location problems, especially for long-term planning. In this work, we present various exact solution approaches on the nested p-center problem, a recently introduced variation of the well-known (vertex) p-center problem, which can be defined as follows: Given a set of locations and a finite time horizon, in each time period, a set of open facilities needs to be opened, where the set of a time period, needs to be a subset of the set of open facilities in the following period. The goal is to minimize the sum of the maximal distance between any customer and its nearest open facility over the time horizon. In our work, we present different mixed integer linear programming formulations on the nested p-center problem, which are solved using exact solution methods like Bender's Decomposition or branch-and-bound. Furthermore, we have developed a solution framework to increase the performance in terms of runtime on all formulations by adopting a diverse set of methods, like cut separation, lifted optimality cuts or preprocessing. The different formulations and methods used are analyzed in a computational study on benchmark instances, known from previous literature and the managerial implications of the nesting property are analyzed.

Period	01 Jul 2024
Event title	33rd European Conference on Operational Research
Event type	Conference
Location	DenmarkShow on map