Abstract
A bi-objective commercial territory design problem motivated by a real-world application from the bottled beverage distribution industry is addressed. The problem considers territory compactness and balancing with respect to number of customers as optimization criteria. Previous work has focused on exact methods for small- to medium-scale instances. In this work, a GRASP framework is proposed for tackling considerably large instances. Within this framework two general schemes are developed. For each of these schemes two strategies are studied: (i) keeping connectivity as a hard constraint during construction and post-processing phases and, (ii) ignoring connectivity during the construction phase and adding this as another minimizing objective function during the post-processing phase. These strategies are empirically evaluated and compared to NSGA-II, one of the most successful evolutionary methods known in literature. Computational results show the superiority of the proposed strategies. In addition, one of the proposed GRASP strategies is successfully applied to a case study from industry.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.References
Bozkaya, B., Erkut, E., Laporte, G.: A tabu search heuristic and adaptive memory procedure for political districting. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 144(1), 12–26 (2003)
Caballero, R., Gandibleux, X., Molina, J.: MOAMP: A generic multiobjective metaheuristic using an adaptive memory. Technical report, University of Valenciennes, Valenciennes, France (2004)
Caballero-Hernández, S.I., Ríos-Mercado, R.Z., López, F., Schaeffer, E.: Empirical evaluation of a metaheuristic for commercial territory design with joint assignment constraints. In: Fernandez, J.E., Noriega, S., Mital, A., Butt, S.E., Fredericks, T.K. (eds.) Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications, and Practice (IJIE), Cancun, Mexico, pp. 422–427 (2007). ISBN: 978-0-9654506-3-8
Caro, F., Shirabe, T., Guignard, M., Weintraub, A.: School redistricting: Embedding GIS tools with integer programming. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 55(8), 836–849 (2004)
Davoudpour, H., Ashraf, M.: Solving multi-objective SDST flexible flow shop using GRASP algorithm. The Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol. 44(7–8), 737–747 (2009)
Deb, K., Pratap, A., Agarwal, S., Meyerivan, T.: A fast elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 6(2), 182–197 (2002)
Erkut, E.: The discrete p-dispersion problem. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 46(1), 48–60 (1990)
Ferlang, J.A., Guénette, G.: Decision support system for the school districting problem. Oper. Res. 38(1), 15–21 (1990)
Guo, J., Trinidad, G., Smith, N.: MOZART: A multi-objective zoning and aggregation tool. In: Proceedings of the Philippine Computing Science Congress (PCSC), pp. 197–201 (2000)
Higgins, A.J., Hajkowicz, S., Bui, E.: A multi-objective model for environmental investment decision making. Comput. Oper. Res. 35(1), 253–266 (2008)
Kalcsics, J., Nickel, S., Schröder, M.: Towards a unified territorial design approach: Applications, algorithms, and GIS integration. Top 13(1), 1–56 (2005)
Lourenço, H.R., Paixpo, J.P., Portuga, R.: Multiobjective metaheuristics for the bus-driver scheduling problem. Transp. Sci. 35(3), 331–343 (2001)
Molina, J., Martí, R., Caballero, R.: SSPMO: A scatter tabu search procedure for non-linear multiobjective optimization. INFORMS J. Comput. 19(1), 91–100 (2007)
Reynolds, A.P., de la Iglesia, B.: A multi-objective GRASP for partial classification. Soft Comput. 13(3), 227–243 (2009)
Ricca, F., Simeone, B.: Local search algorithms for political districting. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 189(3), 1409–1426 (2008)
Ríos-Mercado, R.Z., Fernández, E.A.: A reactive GRASP for a commercial territory design problem with multiple balancing requirements. Comput. Oper. Res. 36(3), 755–776 (2009)
Salazar-Aguilar, MA, Ríos-Mercado, R.Z., Cabrera-Ríos, M.: New models for commercial territory design. Networks Spatial Econ. (2011) doi:10.1007/s11067-010-9151-6
Salazar-Aguilar, M.A., Ríos-Mercado, R.Z., González-Velarde, J.L.: A bi-objective programming model for designing compact and balanced territories in commercial districting. Transp. Res., Part C (2010). doi:10.1016/j.trc.2010.09.011
Segura-Ramiro, J.A., Ríos-Mercado, R.Z., Álvarez-Socarrás, A.M., de Alba Romenus, K.: A location-allocation heuristic for a territory design problem in a beverage distribution firm. In: Fernandez, J.E., Noriega, S., Mital, A., Butt, S.E., Fredericks, T.K. (eds.) Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications, and Practice (IJIE), Cancun, Mexico, pp. 428–434 (2007). ISBN: 978-0-9654506-3-8
Silverman, B.W.: Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis. Chapman and Hall, London (1986)
Tavares-Pereira, F., Figueira, J.R., Mousseau, V., Bernard, R.: Multiple criteria districting problems. The public transportation network pricing system of the Paris region. Ann. Oper. Res. 154(1), 69–92 (2007)
Vianna, D.S., Arroyo, J.E.C.: A GRASP algorithm for the multiobjective knapsack problem. In: Proceedings of the XXIV International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC’04), pp. 69–75. IEEE Computer Society, Arica (2004). ISBN: 0-7695-2200-9
Wei, B.C., Chai, W.Y.: A multiobjective hybrid metaheuristic approach for GIS-based spatial zone model. J. Math. Model. Algorithms 3(3), 245–261 (2004)
Ziztler, E., Thiele, L.: Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms: A comparative case study and strenght Pareto approach. IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 3(4), 257–271 (1999)
Ziztler, E., Laumanns, M., Thiele, L.: SPEA2: Improving the strenght Pareto evolutionary algorithm. Technical Report 103, Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland (2001)
Zoltners, A.A., Sinha, P.: Sales territory design: Thirty years of modeling and implementation. Mark. Sci. 24(3), 313–331 (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Salazar-Aguilar, M.A., Ríos-Mercado, R.Z. & González-Velarde, J.L. GRASP strategies for a bi-objective commercial territory design problem. J Heuristics 19, 179–200 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-011-9160-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-011-9160-8