Locational analysis

A selective review of the locational analysis literature is given, concentrating on models which have been thoroughly tested, and which can be solved by ‘reliable algorithms’.

Abstract

For our purposes, locational analysis is the formulation and solution of location problems. We consider locational analysis which is carried out by the construction and solution of locational models. Such models typically involve locating one or more new facilities, and may include transport costs, fixed costs, constraints on the number of new facilities, upper bounds on distances between new and existing facilities, as well as determining amounts to be shipped between new and existing facilities. We give a selective review of the locational analysis literature, concentrating on models which have been thoroughly tested, and which can be solved by 'reliable algorithms'. For convenience, we consider four classes of locational models: planar models, warehousing models, network models, and discrete, or mixed-integer programming, models.