Capacitated facility location/network design problems

We introduce a combined facility location/network design problem in which facilities have constraining capacities on the amount of demand they can serve. This model has a number of applications in regional planning, distribution, telecommunications, energy management, and other areas. Our model includes the classical capacitated facility location problem (CFLP) on a network as a special case. We present a mixed integer programming formulation of the problem, and several classes of valid inequalities are derived to strengthen its LP relaxation. Computational experience with problems with up to 40 nodes and 160 candidate links is reported, and a sensitivity analysis provides insight into the behavior of the model in response to changes in key problem parameters. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.