A bi-objective programming model for designing compact and balanced territories in commercial districting
A bi-objective programming model for designing compact and balanced territories in commercial districting
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DOI：
10.1016/j.trc.2010.09.011
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发表时间：
2011-08
影响因子：
8.3
通讯作者：
M. A. Salazar-Aguilar;R. Z. Ríos-Mercado;J. González-Velarde
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
M. A. Salazar-Aguilar;R. Z. Ríos-Mercado;J. González-Velarde
在本文中，我们解决了一个瓶装饮料分销公司的领土设计问题。我们提出了一个双目标规划模型，分散和平衡的客户数量作为性能标准。模型中考虑了连接性和销售量平衡等约束条件。大部分的工作领域设计已开发的单目标模型。据我们所知，这是第一个多目标的方法，这个商业领域的设计问题，特别是，与连接约束的领土设计。我们提出了一种改进的ε-约束方法来生成最优Pareto前沿。各种实例的经验证据表明，改进的方法是非常适合寻找最优的帕累托前沿没有更多的计算工作量比传统的方法。在相对较短的时间内解决了多达150个单位和6个地区的问题。对于该问题，改进的方法与传统的ε-约束方法相比，得到了几乎相同的解。此外，我们观察到，当公司减少的容忍度在销售量的不平衡的有效战线的变化和领土的数量增加时，相对于客户数量的平衡变得更难实现。
In this paper, we address a territory design problem arising from a bottled beverage distribution company. We propose a bi-objective programming model where dispersion and balancing with respect to the number of customers are used as performance criteria. Constraints such as connectivity and balancing with respect to sales volume are considered in the model. Most of the work in territory design has been developed for single-objective models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first multi-objective approach for this commercial territory design problem, and in particular, for territory design with connectivity constraints. We propose an improved ε-constraint method for generating the optimal Pareto front. Empirical evidence over a variety of instances shows that the improved method is well suited for finding optimal Pareto fronts with no more computational effort than the traditional method. Instances of up to 150 units and 6 territories are solved in relatively short amount of time. For this problem, the improved method finds practically the same fronts than those found by the traditional ε-constraint method. In addition, we observe that when the firm reduces the tolerance in the imbalance of sales volume the efficient fronts change and when the number of territories increases, the balance with respect to the number of customers becomes harder to achieve.