A multi-criteria decision making approach for location planning for urban distribution centers under uncertainty

Location planning for urban distribution centers is vital in saving distribution costs and minimizing traffic congestion arising from goods movement in urban areas. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision making approach for location planning for urban distribution centers under uncertainty. The proposed approach involves identification of potential locations, selection of evaluation criteria, use of fuzzy theory to quantify criteria values under uncertainty and application of fuzzy TOPSIS to evaluate and select the best location for implementing an urban distribution center. Sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the influence of criteria weights on location planning decisions for urban distribution centers. The strength of the proposed work is the ability to deal with uncertainty arising due to a lack of real data in location planning for new urban distribution centers. The proposed approach can be practically applied by logistics operators in deciding on the location of new distribution centers considering the sustainable freight regulations proposed by municipal administrations. A numerical application is provided to illustrate the approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.