A parametric approach for a nonlinear discrete location problem (Q1598874)

The authors deal with the design of a postal network. The goal of the design is to determine a number of locations of so-called delivery bases under consideration that positions of the post center -- source of mail items and post sectors -- consumers of mail items are given and that delivery bases -- transit centres may be located only at places, which form known finite set of network nodes. This design is formulated as capacitated discrete location problem with nonlinear concave function, in which the nonlinear terms depend on a number of mail items which are processed in the designed delivery bases. To solve this nonlinear discrete problem, the authors developed a two stage algorithm which provides semi-optimal solution. The first stage of the algorithm omits the nonlinear terms of the objective function and making use of a \(p\)-median algorithm and several proved propositions, it provides lower and upper bounds on optimal number of delivery bases. The second stage of the algorithm tries to improve the solutions in the above interval emploing exchange heuristic.