Optimizing dynamic facility location-allocation for agricultural machinery maintenance using Benders decomposition

This paper focuses on optimizing a dynamic facility location-allocation problem with respect to a real-life agricultural machinery maintenance service network that is designed to achieve the prompt and reliable response to malfunctioning agricultural machinery during harvest. We consider a busy farming season divided into several time periods in which the problem is to determine where to locate temporary maintenance stations (TMSs) as well as identifying how many capacitated service-providing facilities to allocate to each TMS to satisfy maintenance demands. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer program (MIP) that seeks to minimize the total service mileage between TMSs and demand points. Additionally, considering that the service flow from a TMS to a demand point in this type of work takes place between potential district locations rather than discrete vertices, we use regional contiguity constraints to enforce agricultural production areas served by a TMS as geographically connected. To solve our MIP problem, an exact algorithm based on Benders decomposition is then developed along with several refinements. Lastly, our model and methodology are illustrated in the handling of a real-world problem in China. Computational results are presented that analyze the optimized facility location-allocation plan, examine the impact of selected parameters, demonstrate the advantage of implementing the contiguity constraints and discuss the performance of solution algorithm. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper focuses on optimizing a dynamic facility location-allocation problem for agricultural machinery maintenance service network, formulate as a mixed integer program to minimize service mileage, and enforce geographical connectivity using regional contiguity constraints. An exact algorithm based on Benders decomposition is developed to solve the problem, illustrated with a real-world case in China, presenting computational results and discussing the impact of parameters, the advantage of contiguity constraints, and algorithm performance.