Capacitated Multi-Facility Location Problem on the Ellipsoid with Multi-Zone Restrictions

One of the main problems faced by organizations is the strategic location of its facilities. This is because resource acquisition and operational performance of the supply chain depends on this aspect. Complexity is increased if the most suitable location is not available due to zone restrictions. While facility location models have been developed to solve this problem, only a single zone restriction has been studied. The present work contributes on this context by (a) proposing a solving method for the multi-facility location problem with multi-zone restrictions, (b) considering the ellipsoidal surface of the Earth to provide more accurate estimates of distances, and (c) developing a large instance with real geographic location data for validation of the method and benchmark studies. The results reported in this work corroborate the suitability of the method and that, even with multi-zone restrictions, minimum distance/costs can be achieved when compared to the non-restricted problem.