An active-set trust-region algorithm for solving warehouse location problem

Abstract

In this paper, an active-set strategy is used together with a penalty method and a trust-region technique to solve a warehouses location problem. The trust region is used to modify the local method in such a way that it is guaranteed to converge at all even if the starting point is far away from the solution. The trust-region method is a well-accepted technique in nonlinear optimization to assure global convergence and is more robust when they deal with rounding errors. One of the advantages of trust-region method is that it does not require the objective function of the model to be convex. The warehouses location problem involves the determination of the number and size of service center (warehouses) to supply a set of demand centers so as to minimize total distribution cost. The proposed approach is tested on two problems to confirm the effectiveness of the algorithm. Our results with the proposed approach have been compared to those reported in the literature.