Problems considered

Facility Location Problem

Description

On a map, there is a set of customers, which needs a product. There is also a set of potential facility location. Each customer will be delivered by the nearest facility. However, the cost of delivering is proportionnal to the distance, and opening a new facility has also a cost. No facility have been built yet and we wonder where we should build somes to minimize the total cost.

Why this problem ?

First of all, this problem is a real issue with many applications. It is difficult to solve, especially with huge instances. It is also a good candidate to test a genetic algorithm because :

• A representation of a solution as a bit array is natural
• Every bit array is a realisable solution to the problem

Formalisation