Solving the Capacitated Facility Location Problem: a Solution Framework Using Ant Colony Optimisation

This book provides a critical investigation into the development, application and evaluation of ant metaheuristics, with a view to solving a class of capacitated facility location problems. Initially the book presents a rationale and motivation for research and provides justification for a deductive empirical mode of research. The book's main purpose is to determine if Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) is a suitable solution technique for solving capacitated facility location problems. A variety of ant based algorithms are derived which include combinations of approximate and exact techniques. The book identifies a previously untried ant hybrid scheme as the most promising of those techniques that were tested and manages to solve all of the OR-Library's capacitated facility location test problems. Analyses of empirical run-time distributions reveal that the hybridization ACO is superior to existing known methods for solving the Capacitated Facility Location Problem. Some of the methods employed in this book ten years ago would have been impractical or infeasible. Consequently, this book is a valuable resource for researchers in facility location, heuristic optimisation and ACO.